As Good As Dead
by notmanos
Summary: Post X2: Back with his old friends, Logan taps into a more chilling side of his personality that he never realized he had, and seems to be losing himself to a past he doesn't want. And trouble is brewing for him back at the mansion ...
1. Part 1

Past Prologue  
  
_____________  
  
She couldn't do this. There was no way in hell she could do this.  
  
She knew Logan and Keogh had gotten in a screaming argument over whether she should come along on this mission or not. Logan had insisted she was too young and not trained enough to go on a mission as dangerous as this one; Keogh insisted that Reaper and Control had vetted her, and figured it was time she started to "pay her own way", earn her keep as it were. In theory, she agreed with him - she felt as ready as she would ever be, and Logan had trained her well. But …  
  
Could she hurt people? When it came down to it, Xia wasn't sure. If they tried to hurt her and someone else, sure, but if they were simply in her way or doing their job? How could she do that to someone?  
  
As if the mission by itself didn't sound scary enough. Here they were, in the middle of a Tunisian desert, in an illegal nuclear facility that seemingly had multiple ties to several governments ( none overtly friendly ), and yet was officially claimed by no one. Bad enough as it was, the Organization had it on good intell that they were experimenting on mutants in here too, as well as trying to make their own, possibly with the help of all this radiation. It wasn't working either.  
  
This entire site was unbelievably toxic. It was a way of keeping unwanted visitors, where local or not, out of here, just in case the mines, weapons, and aggressive soldiers weren't enough.  
  
Since she was just a rookie she was part of the "second wave", the team that came on the site after the "first wave" team had secured the location. The first wave team was simply Logan, Keogh, and Juliet, all veterans, all with devastating powers. Keogh was a "quasi-telekinetic", which meant he could cause objects to explode with his mind; the quasi was in he could only make them explode, not move them or do anything else with them. From what she had unfortunately seen, this included Human faces. Juliet threw fire, as all the burning, overturned jeeps on the surface could attest to. As for Logan … well, he was Wolverine. What more explanation did you need? The people not taken out at a distance by Keogh ( code named Timebomb by the unimaginative wags at HQ ) and Juliet ( code named Inferno by the same creative folks ) were taken out more up close and personal by Wolverine. As a trio went, you couldn't find a more effective fighting force, that really covered all the bases. If it could die, they could kill it.  
  
She shivered and hugged herself, even though the heat in this irradiated underground tunnel was making her sweat like she was in a steam room. The radiation wasn't really so bad here; it got worse as you went lower. In fact the bowels of the installation was off limits to all but Inferno - who seemed to be able to handle such things - and Wolverine, who couldn't be killed or even harmed for very long by something as puny as radiation poisoning. It still made her feel strange, loitering in what was little more than a glorified access tunnel, just on the off chance someone escaped them and tried to leave.  
  
She could have gone down with Logan; from what she understood, the force field she could project around herself could even protect her from radiation. But they were pretty sure there'd be reinforcements waiting in the lower levels, closer to the heart of the complex - reinforcements that were far from Human. That was why he told her in the chopper, while he was zipping up the vest ( she didn't understand why he was wearing body armor, until he told her, "They have to get a tracker on me somehow. My body destroys the implants." It took her a while to understand that he meant his system somehow attacked them, eroded them until they were useless ), that she was to stay there and "… stay out of it, kid. If I go berserk, you don't wanna be there. I don't want you there." He looked away when he said that last bit, as if ashamed.  
  
There was something she really didn't get. She had heard several references to Logan going "berserk", and didn't understand any of them. Maybe it was the language barrier, or the simple problem of usage and lingo. She'd had to look it up in the dictionary. Logan never went crazy - what were they talking about? Control had even warned her to get out of Logan's way if he ever "turned" that way, and to keep her field up. Although he did add, "If he's far enough away, you might want to drop it for a second. The only thing that really gets through to him in that state is smells; if he can scent you as friendly or known, you'll be all right. Your field seems to block his ability to smell you too." He talked about him like he was a mindless attack dog. She wanted to ask more questions, but she had learned you didn't ask Control questions. You spoke when you were spoken to, and no more. She knew she should ask Logan, but she had never figured out the right way to ask, "So, why does everyone think you're crazy?"  
  
The lights were dim, an emergency dark amber that painted shadows of old blood on the smooth, curved walls of the tunnel interior. A single bend behind her was the emergency access hatch, the one they were most likely leaving through, and technically Keogh had already gone - he was working on securing the "up top" from any secondary personnel who might be coming in overland. He'd taken one of the other second wavers with him, and two others had moved to separate points in the complex. She hated being alone here, even though she knew she really wasn't. But this whole place was creepy.  
  
There had been automatic weapons fire at first; she could still smell the acrid tang of gunpowder in the recirculated air. There had been shouting too, that quickly turned to painful, frightened screams. She heard a louder scream as well, a virtual roar, and she was pretty sure that had been Logan. She'd never heard him sound so angry.  
  
And that had been the last sound she had heard.  
  
Well, save for the constant thrum of power through the thinly shielded walls. It was a deep hum, the kind you could feel in the back of your fillings, and she wondered if the other second wavers were freeing the other mutants; not the hostile mutants Juliet and Logan must have "engaged" down in the core, but the others, the ones supposedly being experimented on. She had really wanted to be in on that. After all, she herself had been a captive of a secret base. No, they had never experimented on her, but it had probably only been a matter of time.  
  
Finally she heard another noise, a sort of shuffling, and she made sure her field was up. It took a good deal of concentration for her to keep it completely intact. Logan told her that once she got used to it, it'd be an almost autonomic response, that she'd be able to keep it in place without thinking about it, but she wasn't sure she believed him. After all, how would he know? His body pretty much healed itself, and he could retract his claws whenever he wanted. Okay, so he had to punch them out through his skin, and she couldn't imagine that that didn't hurt, but he must have been used to it by now.  
  
As the noise grew closer, she fumbled for her sidearm, heart in her throat, and then wondered if she'd really drop her field to use it ( she had to - nothing could get in or out. She wondered, if she kept the field up long enough, if she'd run out of air ). She put a hand on it, but left it in its holster.  
  
Finally a figure shambled around the curve of the hall, leaning heavily on the wall, leaving a slight smear on it as it struggled to both advance and stay upright. It gasped something that may have been a request for help.  
  
She advanced cautiously, quickly scanning his clothes. He wasn't wearing the uniform of the security staff, it looked like he was just wearing torn, bloody jeans, and a rag that may have once been a shirt. "Are you … are you one of the mutants?" She asked in English, belatedly remembering that Logan had spoken to the locals in a language she thought was Arabic, or some derivative thereof. She only spoke and understood English - barely - and Cantonese.  
  
As it turned out, though, he spoke English. "I am a mutant," he said, then collapsed to the floor on his hands and knees.   
  
She reached for him, then remembered to drop her field for a moment so she didn't hurt him further. Blood looked to be pouring from his mouth, dribbling on the cement floor in a steady rain, and she had to fight back a brief wave of nausea. God, she hated blood.  
  
She'd just touched his shoulder when he reacted so fast it was all a blur. One second she just touched his shoulder, and the next second she hit the wall on the far side, hard enough that she could hear the dull thud of her head against the concrete. Stars exploded before her eyes, and what she could see of the room had gone liquid.  
  
His leering face filled her limited vision, and she could now see his face was half burned away, possibly from the radiation in the lower core, or from being hit by Inferno; either way, she could see the muscles of his jaw had a thin crust of blackened flesh that crackled as he smiled, exposing a white glimpse of mandible that matched the dead eye socket on his right side, and she knew if she had the strength, she'd have thrown up all over him. "Stupid little bitch," he spat, blood still pouring out the bottom half of his ruined mouth. He must have been mortally injured, but he was still going - how was he still going? "Did you think you could stop me?"  
  
It hurt to concentrate and raise her field, but she did, although it didn't feel stable. She could feel blood crawling down her scalp, matching the itch of sweat trickling down her spine. The dim light appeared to waver, and suddenly his chest seemed to explode, splattering blood on her field.   
  
She thought that Keogh had come back, but then she saw a glint of metal before it ripped to the side and the top of half of his torso seemed to slip to one side in a gush of blood. He died so fast surprise barely had time to register on the remains of his face.   
  
He landed on the floor with a wet splat, leaving her looking up at Logan, who appeared to be partially ruined himself. His vest was all but torn off, hanging in shreds around his waist. Since he wasn't wearing a red t-shirt underneath, she was puzzled by his appearance until she realized it was blistered, burned skin, liberally dosed with blood - some his own, most probably not. The hair of his face, arms, and torso had been mostly singed off, although the hair on his head appeared mainly just messed up, and she watched as the broken blood vessels in his eyes - which turned the whites a bloody crimson - healed up, making the white look like something moving within his eye sockets.   
  
But that was just about the only thing in his eyes. It was disconcerting, but his eyes seemed completely empty, full of nothing but a vacant, aimless rage. "Logan?" She asked, as he had not retracted his claws inside his ruined hands, and he seemed to be glaring at her like she was a target. His lip was curled up in a sneer, and his teeth looked bloody, but she assumed it was the radiation exposure. It made your gums hemorrhage, right? ( Right? Why else would there be blood on his teeth? ) The poor man - how much pain was he in? She couldn't even begin to imagine it, and felt sick for him. She had no idea how he was continuing to move either.  
  
He didn't respond to his name at all; he didn't recognize it. She heard another noise, like someone had loosed a tiger in the hall, and slowly realized the noise was coming from Logan - he was growling. He growled? He didn't sound Human; he sounded like the animal she could see lurking inside his eyes. Logan wasn't here anymore, and she wasn't sure what was. It scared her more than the man with half a face. He looked through her like he didn't see her, or she wasn't worth seeing - she didn't know which was worse.  
  
She saw his nostrils flare as he kicked aside the torn corpse of the man who attacked her, and she remembered what Control had said about scents. Was this what he meant? Was this what they all meant by Logan going crazy? What had been the etymology of the word berserk? It was old Norse, and meant essentially "bear shirt", derived from "berserker", an ancient Scandinavian warrior frenzied in battle and held to be invulnerable. That was exactly what they meant. They were being literal; he went crazy with pain, or bloodlust, or both, or something she couldn't hope to guess at.  
  
"Wolverine," she said firmly, briefly dropping her field. Not long - she was too frightened to do it for long, and he was too close - but she didn't think it would matter. Logan's sense of smell was acute enough that he could pick up the scent of a single person in an arena full of thousands of them. He only needed half a second - or so she hoped.  
  
She saw it then, confusion passing over his face, and he paused his menacing forward advance and blinked rapidly, as if he had just woken up. His eyes no longer looked empty; something had come back, something - someone - who hadn't the slightest idea what the fuck was happening. It was like he'd been in a trance, hypnotized, but he hadn't been. ( Had he? )  
  
He looked around, looked down at himself, finally spotted the mostly bifurcated corpse and stared at it for a few long seconds. He retracted his claws, but still looked around as if expecting an attack from either or both sides. When he looked back at her, his eyes were still wide and fever bright with confusion. "Xi, are you - are you okay?" He asked, glancing back at her. He tried to pretend he was fine, but she wondered what he would say if she asked where they were.  
  
She simply nodded, although it caused a sharp pain to rear up inside her skull, and she winced, watching her vision turn to sparkling pixels of light. "Let's get you out of here," he said, then paused as he reached for her. She wondered if it was the blood on his hands, or the fact that her field was still up, even if only partially. Then he met her eyes helplessly, and asked, "How the fuck do we get out of here?"  
  
Xia learned two important things that day. One, mutants wouldn't hesitate to hurt fellow mutants. And two, Wolverine and Logan weren't necessarily the same thing at all.  
  
1  
  
"You'd better cash in!"  
  
"Fuck!" Ortiz cursed, ripping off his earphones. Jane's Addiction was still pouring out the headset at a volume loud enough that the bass line could be heard loud and clear. The sheer volume could probably stun a bat, and if he had been deafened, he was so going to kill all those fucking muties.  
  
"They're having a party?" Gallagher suggested.  
  
Haigler snorted derisively. "Probably an orgy. They don't got anything to celebrate, do they?"  
  
Ortiz shook his head, hoping the ringing in his ears would stop, as he looked up at the house across the street. It was a little split level, an innocuous exurban dwelling outside of Salem, Oregon, set apart from its nearest neighbors by the sprawling hay fields of a former horse riding facility, recently abandoned and sold to housing developers at a cost that would have made a sadomasochist blush. This home, its closest across the way neighbor, was inhabited by a corporate middleman with a real estate agent wife, two kids and a dog, good citizens who found something else to do for the evening as soon as they were offered sufficient financial compensation. Jerks. Where was their fucking patriotism?   
  
It wasn't clear why Zhang, Quinn, and the other muties were here, but Dorn - the new Control - figured it couldn't be good. They seemed to be sticking together as a cohesive unit, and that itself was suspicious. He quickly consulted his laptop to confirm visual i.d. on all the muties who had gone inside the house just three short minutes ago. Yep, most of the old Alpha team - Xia "Atomic" Zhang; Tom "Quake" Quinn; Clive "Spider" Koslowski; Cressida "Chameleon" Santiago; Sanjay "Spike" Dhaliwal ( who ironically used to be Reaper's right hand man, when he was the top mutie in the Org; of course, now he was compost, like Dhaliwal was soon to be ); and Jayson "Specter" Miazaki, who appeared to have been partially using his powers on the walk up the drive, as only about half of him appeared visible in the digital photo. That in itself wasn't suspicious, because he'd worked with him before, and knew that his power had control over him. If he didn't totally focus on being visible, he wouldn't be.  
  
They would be hard to contain as a group. If they could separate them, Miazaki - who was so milquetoast after all this time he still abhorred fighting - Dhaliwal and Santiago would be easy targets, as they could be sniped at a distance, with little in the way of defense. Quinn was on the borderline, because if he suspected something or remained conscious, he could drop a building on them. Spider was just fucking nasty, and the most incredible sniper that had ever been ( he could drop someone from a quarter mile away, easily ), while Zhang would always be a problem, as long as she was on her guard. They probably stuck together thinking they could form an ever increasing circle of protection, the strong ones protecting the weaker ones, guaranteeing safety for them all. Of course, that was a nice idea, but it was never going to work.  
  
The Organization knew the weaknesses of all its muties. You didn't let your monster loose if you didn't know how to rein it in, and he wasn't just talking about the explosive trackers most of them used to have ( it was assumed one of the telekinetics took them all out at once, destroyed them inside their fellow muties - he could only be happy that they were probably dead ). Some of them would be difficult to get, but none were impossible.  
  
"Cho, anything on infrared?" He asked, closing the laptop and doing a final weapons check.  
  
"Negative. They still got those hot spots all over the place."  
  
"Hot spots" were a defensive counter-surveillance measure they had obviously stolen from the Org. They were little devices that basically scrambled all infrared readers by putting out tons of infrared wavelength garbage, masking true heat signatures. Cho thought he could compensate for it, but apparently he couldn't.  
  
"Doesn't matter," Ortiz insisted, facing his strike team. A dozen commandos, a two to one ratio to each mutie, the bare minimum of accepted mutant confrontation protocol. But considering how tight and scare resources and men were at the moment, he would have to live with this. And at least he knew these guys were good. "Beta team, you're on. You have sixty seconds to get to get to target."  
  
"Affirmative," Cho said, tossing his useless infrared goggles aside, and grabbing up the snub nosed tube of the grenade launcher. Haigler, and Baker followed him out, taking up grenade launchers of their own. Out in front of this home on the street was a manhole cover, giving direct sewer access … assuming you could lift the damn thing. Luckily they could. It still didn't smell too good, but the pipe, if followed correctly, would take them to a spot fifteen meters out from the house where the muties were holed up, behind and slightly to the west. That afternoon, they cut out an egress point in the pipe, so they could emerge at just the right place, a blind spot from the house. It didn't matter that it was late night, and the moon wasn't out ( and it was drizzling slightly, so even the stars were hidden by clouds ) - there was no taking chances with muties like these.   
  
They all loaded up with grenade launchers, although they were all packing different grenades. They had heavy gas canisters and flash bangs, both of which would be used concurrently. No real choice; they had to hit them hard and fast in order to incapacitate them, or just bag the whole operation. That was the problem with muties - they were unpredictable, and generally too powerful for their own good.  
  
Time elapsed, he, Gallagher, and Williams headed out the front door, and as soon as Gallagher confirmed through his binoculars they were not be watched, they scrambled quickly across the street, as quiet as cat burglars. They were on radio silence to prevent them from intercepting any transmissions, but he saw the shadows of beta team moving into the backyard, and after a five second wait, they all fired as one.  
  
Each shooter picked a window - he took lower left, and right, Gallagher took upper right, Williams took upper left, while Cho, Haigler, and Baker split the back windows between them. Gas grenades went in a split second before the flash bangers, and whatever glass that was left in the panes after the explosive impact of the grenades blew out when the flash bangs detonated, sprinkling glass like sleet on the overgrown front lawn. They let the gas hiss for a moment, filling the home with a white vapor ( it would also serve to show them where Specter was, even if he'd totally disappeared inside his power ) that started billowing out the broken windows like smoke.  
  
There was no movement, no sound inside the home, and as soon as Ortiz and his men lowered their breathing masks over their faces, he shouted, "Go!" They used the butt ends of the now empty grenade launchers as battering rams to smash in the doors, and once inside they slung them over their backs and pulled forward the guns with the special loads, Teflon coated with explosive charges in the tips - a nasty bullet called a hornet. It would drop all of the mutants, save for Zhang, if she had her field up; they weren't sure what could get through if she had her field up.  
  
When they entered the gas filled home, now looking like a tornado had hit it, Ortiz was immediately hit with the idea that something was very wrong, but he wasn't sure what. They had moved through the ( formerly ) neat kitchen and small dining room, into the wide living room, where the white vapor was swirling in the air currents coming in through the hole where the bay window used to be. It was then that Ortiz figured out what was wrong with this entire scenario.  
  
There was no music. Considering the volume it was at while pouring through the headphones, they should have been able to hear it on the front lawn - hell, maybe on the street. But the music was only in this room, and at average volume, and he saw why as the white vapor began to clear. The stereo speakers were pressed right up against the wall on the left side … exactly where the passive bugs had been planted, using the house's own wiring to feed them sound in a way that the muties shouldn't have been able to detect. But they had, hadn't they?  
  
"We've been made," he shouted, heart in his throat. "Abort!"  
  
But the order was barely out of his mouth when he heard a dull, meaty thud behind him, along with a brief grunt of pain. He spun on his heels, gun raised, just in time for a gun barrel to be shoved in his own face. Looking beyond it, he saw a man with astonishingly bad hair, scruffy facial hair, and cold green eyes studying him like a bug he just found in his soup. "If anyone would like to see their team leader's brain painted all over the carpet, move," he snarled, barely sparing the others a glance.   
  
He wasn't wearing a mask. The narcotizing gas swirled between them like thick fog, and the man didn't even cough, and Gallagher's gun in his hand ( he could tell by the hair color that it was Gallagher face down on the floor ) didn't waver a single iota. And that's how he recognized him.  
  
As Ortiz felt his own eyes widened in surprise, Wolverine smirked coldly at him. "I've breathed the gas before - I'm immune. Nice try, though."  
  
"Stand down," Ortiz snapped to his men, trying not to let the panic creep into his voice. Wolverine, fucking Wolverine - no wonder they were made. They hadn't moved, as they knew the mutie might shoot, but they all had their guns fixed on him in case he fired just for the hell of it. "I said stand the fuck down! Bullets don't work on him, you assholes!"  
  
"Who the fuck is he?" Cho asked, obediently - if reluctantly - lowering his weapon.  
  
"You don't recognize me? I'm hurt," Wolverine said sarcastically. God, he wanted to smash this smug mutie's face in … but he wasn't sure exactly how one did that.  
  
"This is Wolverine," Ortiz replied, spitting the word out like it tasted bad. It did.  
  
Perhaps they hadn't seen his mugshot before, but obviously they'd heard of him, judging from the small, disappointed groans. "How - why are you here?" Baker asked savagely. She was the only female on the team, and made up for any supposed inadequacies by being more obnoxious than anyone else. "You're with Xavier now."  
  
"I'm with no one," Wolverine corrected her, never taking his eyes - or his gun - off Ortiz. "I work for myself."  
  
"How long have you known we were watchin' this place?" Ortiz asked, mostly out of curiosity.  
  
"Long enough. How long have you guys known I was here?" It was a sarcastic question, as obviously he had somehow foxed them - they had had no idea he was here; they wouldn't have hit the place like this if they had. It was then Ortiz suddenly realized why Specter was partially phased out on one side - he was hiding someone else. He had totally phased out Wolverine, probably on his request. Shit! This whole thing had been n ambush - but on them, not the other way around, like it was supposed to be.  
  
"If you knew we were gonna hit this place, why are you still here?" He didn't want to ask, but again he felt he had to, even looking down the barrel of a gun that he knew Wolverine wouldn't hesitate to use. "Is it revenge, is that it?"  
  
Wolverine smiled slowly, evilly, and Ortiz again longed to find something to smash his face in with. "Not everything is revenge, although there's a bit of that. No, Team Leader, we want some information."  
  
The gas had thinned enough that they could see all the others joining Wolverine in securing the troops, although they were wearing breather masks. Quake, Chameleon, Spike, and Atomic started gathering guns and spare grenades from the troops, while Ortiz was pretty sure he saw a phased out Specter, limned by the lingering wisps of gas, watching from the dining room but making no move to help his compatriot in gathering up arms. He wondered where Spider was, then glanced up - yep, there he was on the ceiling, leering at all of them with a sordid satisfaction. "Go fuck yourself," Baker spat, pretty much just speaking for herself. "We ain't telling' you shit."  
  
Wolverine ignored her, showing his old control, his old leadership skills. Ortiz wondered how much he was starting to remember. "You will let us have access to the new Organization database, and you will not fuck us over, or I'm gonna start loppin' off body parts until you're nothing more than stumps and a head."  
  
"What's in it for me to cooperate?" Ortiz replied. He figured Wolverine was going to kill them all anyways, if Spider didn't.  
  
"Play nice, and you'll wake up with your life and all your limbs. And decide fast, because by the count of five, we're killin' you all and tryin' to hack the database ourselves." Wolverine said this all very coldly, with no true anger, no remorse, no hate - it was matter of fact, inevitable as the tides, and all the more chilling for it. This was the old Wolverine, back in his element of control and intimidation. He was in killing mode, and it had nothing to do with resentment and everything to do with professionalism; achieving an objective. "One."  
  
Did he believe him? Beyond a doubt. But did he believe they wouldn't kill them if they did capitulate? No, not really … but he had to give it a shot ( so to speak ), didn't he? Live to fight another day, live to maybe take this fucking arrogant son of a mutie bitch down. His superiors might not see it that way, but he could always concoct some story that was more acceptable. What the fuck could they want with the database?   
  
But he wasn't going to worry about that until he found out if he was going to live through this night or not. 


	2. Part 2

2  
  
Xavier knew there was something wrong the moment he entered the hospital.  
  
It wasn't that there was something specifically, visually amiss: a crowd of people waited in the lobby chairs up front, in varying amounts of pain and illness, and the staff moved about efficiently, if somewhat chaotically. The sunlight bleeding through the glass door was yellowed as if aged, and the building reeked of disinfectant layered over the distinct, disquieting smell of sickness. But he had a familiar sense of déjà vu even before the head nurse, a slightly overweight but attractive Hispanic woman, said cheerfully, "Mr. Xavier, are you here to pick your friends up? That was fast." She glanced at Piotr curiously, having never seen him before. Usually he stayed in the car because he hated hospitals ( it was the smell, apparently ), but he overcame his fear today to accompany him. His face still bore the shadows of bruises garnered from the Ressik attack, and perhaps that made him appear suspicious to her.  
  
Pick them up? He had come to see how Scott and Ororo were doing, as Scott had just come through his latest surgery last night. They were far from ready to leave. "Excuse me?" He replied, slightly confused. "I think you've made a mistake."  
  
It was then the déjà vu turned into a sense of psychic pressure as painful and overwhelming as a sudden onset migraine, and he realized what was causing the sensation just as soon as he heard, "Good day, Chuck."  
  
Bob was now standing near the closest elevator, leaning against the wall as if casually waiting for one. He was wearing his usual black leather pants with matching biker boots, paired with a tight black t-shirt that inexplicably said "Sausage Victim" in bright white letters emblazoned across the front. Xavier did wonder what the hell that was about, but was afraid to ask. His hair was a little scruffier than it had been the last time he'd seen him, perhaps longer, but it was impossible to say. Bob was oddly hard to remember in perfect detail.  
  
He sensed Piotr stiffen in confusion behind him. "Another teleporter?" He asked. Bob had just appeared - quietly, suddenly - and Piotr was simply not used to it, having never encountered Bob before.   
  
"Close enough," Bob agreed, but his usual cheerfulness seemed forced. Something was bothering Bob, and that was troubling. "I just checked my answering machine messages. Sorry I was so late. It's been … well, shit's been happening. Shit is continuing to happen, but it's different shit, so that's something." Bob got some evil looks from a woman actually waiting for the elevator, so he looked around and said, "We're not here."  
  
The woman looked away, at the elevator panel, straight through Bob's torso. An orderly almost walked into them before Bob made a sort of sweeping hand gesture, making the man swerve aside. Piotr looked around helplessly, trying to find who Bob had been talking to. "He … alters reality," Xavier told him. "Don't let it bother you."  
  
"Can you rust?" Bob asked jovially. "I mean, you're metal, right?"  
  
"Huh?" Piotr asked, genuinely puzzled. He didn't know what to think of this strange man who simply showed up and started acting friendly with everyone, all the while dressed up like low level rough trade.  
  
Bob waved a hand dismissively. "Forget it, mate. I was just bein' silly."  
  
"I take it you've seen Scott and Ororo?" Xavier interjected, sparing Piotr any more confusion.  
  
Bob nodded, finally standing up straight. "I fixed 'em. They're still a little fuzzy on who would want to shoot 'em. I assured them the kids are okay. They are, aren't they?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Good."  
  
"Fixed them?" Piotr repeated, not comprehending this.   
  
"I waved my magic wand, and spared Scott from further, painful lung reinflation. Always a bugger, that." Bob then made a show of looking around behind them, while the people continued flowing around them like a river unaware it was parting for stones. Xavier couldn't blame Piotr for feeling slightly discombobulated. ( Oh dear, there was a pun in there, wasn't there? ) "Logan not with you, then?"  
  
Xavier closed his eyes briefly, wondering how he was going to tell him, but when he opened his eyes, Bob was agape in shock, his violently cobalt eyes as wide as silver dollars. "What the ..? Chuck, what the fuck?!"  
  
"I'm not sure I understand it myself," he admitted. Piotr wanted to ask what they were talking about, but decided Bob was a fellow telepath as well and didn't. "He felt drawn to the woman, and left with her. That's the only thing that makes sense."  
  
"You drove him the fuck away!" Bob exclaimed, throwing his hands up in disgust. " You lied to him and you dismissed him!"  
  
He was slightly taken aback at the accusations. "I never drove him away." But didn't he fear he had? ( Although, should Bob really accuse him of lying? Of all people … ) "That woman is connected to the shooting of Scott and Ororo and threats against the school. They are clearly liars, and I don't believe there's any validity to what they were claiming. If there was a auxiliary plan it would not only exist on phantom discs, of which there is only a single set. In retrospect, I realize their only plan may have been to simply lure Logan back into range. A plan I may have inadvertently helped them with." It was always ironic how things were in retrospect; how they seemed obvious, when at the time they never even occurred to you. Shouldn't the mention of Weapon X by itself have been a big clue? He was an idiot. But he never believed, not in his wildest imaginings, that Logan could be seduced back so easily.  
  
Bob shook his head and looked away, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know how he's been since …. what happened to Jean."  
  
Xavier felt taken aback once more. But then again, this was Bob - didn't he know everything? His cobalt eyes scudded to Piotr behind him. "You can't hear this." He then looked down at him once more. "How much do you know about that, Chuck?"  
  
"How much do you know?" He countered.  
  
"I asked you first," Bob said, clearly stalling.   
  
But Xavier was curious enough to know what Bob knew that he told him. "She … evolved. Transformed."  
  
"Do you know why?"  
  
"Not precisely." He then studied him carefully. "You had nothing to do with that, did you?"  
  
"Gods, I hope not," Bob admitted. That didn't sound good. "You haven't told them she's .. well, not precisely dead, have you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Did you know she's been contacting Logan through his dreams?"  
  
Bob must have been some omen of chaos; it trailed in his wake like a shadow that never went away, no matter the time of day or night. "No. He didn't mention that."  
  
"He doesn't know. No, that's not right. Unconsciously he knows it's Jean, but he won't consciously admit that, as she appears in his dream as raw energy. She's struggling with it; she doesn't seem to realize her own strength."  
  
"What does she want with Logan?"  
  
Bob shrugged, grimacing like it pained him to admit he was at a loss. "She's trying to talk to him, communicate through him, perhaps, but so far she hasn't been able to formulate an articulate message. I hope she's retooling and coming back at it, but I have no idea."  
  
"Have you tried to contact her?"  
  
"She's avoiding me."  
  
Xavier thought that was rather wise of her, but then it occurred to him that there might be a connection between Jean's efforts to talk to Logan and Logan's sudden decision to help the very people who had violated him.   
  
"That's an interesting theory," Bob agreed, trespassing in his thoughts. "What, do you think maybe his longing for her, coupled with the fact that he believes her to be dead and it to be his fault somehow, has made him reach out to a woman who may be an old love interest? Well, that and the fact that he feels completely alienated from your little super squad."  
  
"I beg your pardon?" He wasn't about to admit it, but he hadn't even begun to consider that possibility: Logan seeking some type of intimacy out of remorse and guilt over what he'd lost. And he called himself a telepath? He had seriously bobbled the ball on that one.  
  
"You can't blame yourself for that, Chuck," Bob said, once again eavesdropping. "You don't like to go near Logan's mind."  
  
"I try and respect his privacy," he said, mentally adding *Unlike some others*.  
  
Bob chuckled anemically. "I can't help it, mate. Goes with the territory."  
  
"What did you mean that Logan feels alienated from us? Doesn't he feel alienated from life itself?"  
  
"Ah, noticed that, did ya? Yeah, but he was almost in the door with you guys, ya know? Okay, mainly with Jean, but hey, that's why you put 'em together, right?"  
  
He knew he was repeating himself, but he couldn't help it. "I beg your pardon? Are you insinuating something?"  
  
"Just that you knew chemistry when you saw it. I ain't accusing you of bein' a pimp. But you had to know that was eventually gonna be trouble."  
  
"I talked to Jean about it. She said they were both adults, and they could handle it."  
  
"Like eat her cake and have it too, huh? See, this is why open relationships are so nice." He shook his head in a manner that could have been considered dismissive. Sometimes people are just amazin' closed systems of entropy, aren't they?"  
  
"Is that how you see people?"  
  
Bob suddenly gave him that open, rangy grin of his, but it had an edge to it, like his good humor could turn sour at any moment. "It is what we all are, Charlie, for better or worse. C'est la vie." He then glanced at Piotr, and said, "You're back with us." Hardly pausing for breath, he went on. "Let's get Scott and Ororo out of here, then I'll see if I can't find out what's up with Logan."  
  
"Are you going to bring him back?" Xavier wondered, hoping for a major affirmative. ( Which, coming from Bob, would probably be some variation of "You betcher ass, mate." ) What could they have possibly wanted with Logan? It couldn't be benign; that was the only certain thing.  
  
To his surprise, he shook his head. "That's up to Logan. Have to respect his privacy, after all." He then winked at him in a way meant to be funny, but it seemed positively sinister. He turned towards the elevator, punching the call button, clearly signaling that this conversation was over as far as he was concerned. He sang quietly under his breath, "We are an accident waiting to happen."  
  
He didn't know about Bob. He didn't know about him at all.  
  
3  
  
He knew the instant he got a good look at his surroundings that he didn't want to be here.   
  
He was back in the garden of Xavier's, but it was Jean's version, abundant with blooming flowers, whose strong scent made him sneeze. If he lingered - and if they were real - it would be painful to be near them, simply from the potency of their reek. Logan knew the thing had to be here - he sensed a presence - but he really wasn't in the mood to deal with that cryptic thing right now. "What now?" He sighed, walking away from the row of butterfly bushes, overgrown to the point that they looked like a solid hedge. But as he walked around them, heading for the mansion … he ended up in the exact same place, the center of the garden. What the fuck? "I ain't in the mood for head games. What d'ya want with me?"  
  
"What do you want?" Jean's voice asked, oddly curious.   
  
Even though it felt like his heart stopped, he pivoted instantly on his heels, and found himself suddenly face to face with her. He took a step back, not quite ready for this; even the non-communicative ball of fire would have been better than this. "Jean," he finally said, remembering to breathe. He wasn't sure if he was sick or simply angry.   
  
"Why are you here?" She asked. Her eyes glowed orange in the light of the setting sun, the same sun kissed color of the sky, and it made her hair look like a knot of frozen fire. She wore the same demure top and skirt she was wearing the first time he saw her; all she needed was a lab coat to make the picture complete.   
  
"What?" He was pretty sure seeing her had shut down part of his brain. He was thrilled to see her; he was heartbroken to see her. He couldn't decide, "I … this is your place, not mine."  
  
She shook her head, crossing her arms loosely over her chest. "Not this place. Where you are."  
  
Okay, now he knew he really was dreaming - that made no fucking sense at all. "Huh? We're in the same place."  
  
She gave him a tiny smile, like she was enjoying a private joke, and he was suddenly gripped by a wave of anguish. He missed her; he wanted her back. He fucked up so many things with her, he was sure of that now, and he would have loved a chance to go back at them, fix them somehow. "No, Logan, we're not." She then studied him, head cocked to the side, and asked, "If you know you've made a mistake, why see it through?"  
  
He didn't know what she wanted, and he had absolutely no clue what she was rambling on about. As painful as it was, he met her eyes, and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Jean."  
  
"This isn't about me," she claimed. Then she reached out to him, and he lurched back, suddenly certain he didn't want to feel her touch. He had no fucking idea why, but he just didn't think he could take it. She looked a little taken aback by that, as if she didn't understand his reluctance to be touched. Still, she let her hand fall to her side, and said, "You can't do this to yourself, Logan. There are no obligations here."  
  
He snorted in disdain, feeling a wave of self-pitying anger, towards her and towards himself in equal measures. "There are always obligations. I just … I don't know what to do. I … I don't know." Right now he didn't know much about anything. The longer he stayed with Xia and the others - who resented him to varying degrees - the more lost he felt.  
  
In a way, it felt good. He felt stronger, more in control, more settled inside himself, but at the same time, he felt like he was losing some intangible part of himself, something that was confused and hurt, something deeply fucked up … but something that had feelings, no matter how screwed up they were. Nowadays, he was starting to feel cold all the time, and he didn't know what it meant.  
  
But he was good, wasn't he? In a strange way, when he was planning these assaults, telling the others exactly how things were going to go down, he felt like he was where he belonged; he was home again.  
  
And it scared him shitless. He was where he belonged, doing what he was designed to do, and something inside him was slowly but surely dying, and he couldn't figure out why. It seemed counterintuitive somehow; it made no sense at all. How could he feel more in control and yet be falling apart at the same time?  
  
"Leave before you can't return," she said cryptically. And when he looked at her eyes, he saw nothing but fire -   
  
Logan woke up, aware something was amiss. It only took a millisecond for him to figure out the hotel's air conditioner had conked out. It made a noise like a floor buffer in an industrial steel toilet; it was conspicuous by its absence.  
  
Not that it mattered. It wasn't a hot day, or even much of a warm one, just humid. As he shoved himself up to a sitting position, he found he was only covered by the rough sheets anyways; the ugly floral patterned comforter had been gathered together into a lump and tossed into the far corner of the room. beside the television cabinet. It bothered him that he couldn't remember doing that. He should have guessed he would, though; lately, he liked being cold. Maybe he was trying to make the external match the internal, or he just wanted to remember what it was like to feel. Oh, fuck him - how maudlin was that?  
  
He stumbled to the bathroom, feeling like a sleepwalker, and he realized that lately he felt like he was always sleepwalking. He was pretty sure he wasn't under anyone's telepathic sway, but maybe that made it worse somehow. It would have been easier if he could blame this all on someone else.  
  
Even though he was far more depressed than horny, he took a cold shower anyways, hoping it would help wake him up, but he wasn't sure it did. He still felt zombie like getting dressed, like he was just going through the motions of being a living human being - what the fuck was wrong with him? Nowadays it seemed like he only felt real while in the midst of something - the more tense the situation, the more dangerous, the better. Otherwise, he was just numb. That dream about Jean probably didn't help very much.  
  
He was pulling on his undershirt when her heard a light, tentative knock at the door. He knew by smell who it was. He went to the door and unlocked it, asking the moment he did, "Is Tom gone or just asleep?"  
  
Xia gave him a slightly disappointed look. "We are a team now, you know?" He simply waited as she came in, stepping back into the truncated "foyer", and as soon as she shut the door behind her, she admitted, "He went out to get some breakfast."  
  
"I hope he remembered to get some toast and beer for me." He retreated into his room, a little off put by how messy it had become in such a short period of time. Did he remember doing this? Would it matter if he did?  
  
This was probably what it was like to have alcoholic blackouts - except he didn't get drunk, nonetheless drunk enough to forget everything. Only the insane blacked out for no reason … which explained so goddamn much it almost floored him.  
  
Xia chuckled faintly. "That's an interesting breakfast. I thought it was white wine with toast."  
  
"I ain't fancy." He sat down on the end of his messy bed and started to put on his socks and boots, while Xia perched on the edge of the room's lone chair. She was careful not to sit on his coat, although who the hell knew why. Wasn't like he cared if it wrinkled. "What is it you wanted to tell me?"  
  
"Why do you think I'm here to tell you something? I could be here to talk."  
  
"You could be. But you're not."  
  
She sighed wearily. "You don't make anything easy, do you?"  
  
"Not my nature."  
  
"I should have guessed." She let a moment pass, rubbing her palms on her knees as if they were wet. "Why is it so cold in here?"  
  
"Is it?" He lied. "I hadn't noticed."  
  
She seemed to let that go, but he did feel her eyes linger on him a beat longer than necessary, either guessing he was lying or worried he was completely insensate. "Clive thinks we're on the right path."  
  
"And what proof does he have to substantiate that?" He asked, finally looking at her. "From what we've been able to tell, the Organization version two point oh has no fucking idea where Magneto is, nonetheless Armageddon."  
  
"But they've been attempting to intercept us. It's a good sign."  
  
He scoffed, returning to lacing up his boots. "Is it?"  
  
"We must be getting close. Otherwise why so much interest in us?"  
  
"Oh, gee, let me think. We were their trained pack of mutant killers for how many years? I wonder why they'd be interested in tidying up their loose ends."  
  
"It's more than that."  
  
"It is? News to me."  
  
She was silent for a moment, shifting nervously in the chair. "Do you miss them?"  
  
He glanced up at her curiously, noticing - not for the first time - how pale she was. It seemed like every day she was a bit more pale, as if wearing Kabuki make up, and judging from her pale pink lips, he wondered if the cold was getting to her. It wasn't that cold in here … was it? Oh fuck - he was the guy that woke up naked in a snowstorm in the fucking Canadian Rockies. Could he even begin to be a good judge of temperature extremes? Cold was what he was; cold was home. How much was too much? "Them who?"  
  
"Those people back at Xavier's - "  
  
He burst out laughing, cutting her short. "Yeah, sure darlin'. I miss the superior telepath and his various lap dogs. I never fit in there. I was just there for - "  
  
( Jean. )  
  
- somewhere to crash. And it seemed … okay at first. I can't believe I let my guard down"  
  
"They used you?"  
  
He rolled his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug, and for some reason he didn't feel he could look her in the eye. "Not … kinda. They wanted me to be something I wasn't." ( A killer. I'm a killer, he thought, and instantly banished it. Maybe he was or maybe he wasn't; he didn't know if it mattered anymore.) He shook his head, shook away all the creeping doubts, and got back to a more comfortable subject - facts. "Spider's wrong. We're not on the right track; we're not even on a track. We're just spinnin' our wheels here."  
  
"But yesterday, in Salem - "  
  
"We pulled our last ambush."  
  
She looked mildly surprised. "What? You're doing so well, Logan. We've never been so focused - "  
  
"What?" He had no idea what she was saying. Did she think he was saying he was leaving? ( Jean's cryptic words, "Leave before you can't return," reoccurred to him, but he still had no idea what they meant. He almost missed dreaming of being vivisected. ) "Look, the reason their attacks on us have all failed is 'cause they didn't know I was with you. Once that group reports back to their superiors, they will know, and I am no longer a surprise element. We'll lose that edge."  
  
"No we won't. We still have you."  
  
He thought she was lying, attempting to catch him off guard by being hopelessly sappy, but she seemed sincere. The worst thing about Xi was she always seemed sincere. He knew, in the back of his mind, she couldn't be, not having been in the Organization as long as she had been ... but he wanted to believe, didn't he? He shook his head and looked away as he got up, grabbing up his second shirt from the bed. ( When it was this cold, layers were a good thing. )"I ain't special; just another failed project of theirs."  
  
"You weren't - " she began, but instantly stopped. He wasn't what? He wasn't a failed project? "You are special, Logan. You always were."  
  
He snorted derisively. "Yeah. I can rip open my own gut, use my kidney for a hackey sack, and put it back in. That's pretty special, all right."  
  
"That's not what I mean. You were the impossible man, remember?" There was a slight pause - perhaps a realization of horror at what she just said ( him, remember? That was a good one ) - and then she continued on quickly, as if hoping he wouldn't notice. "No matter how bad things were, you'd find a way. If there wasn't a way out, you'd find one or make one. Improvisation was your greatest strength."  
  
"I thought it was brute force." He raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what she would say to that.  
  
But her look threw him off once more. It was wistful yet mildly sad, as if she was recalling a loved one now dead. "You did what you had to do. Call it what you want."  
  
He didn't like being looked at that way - like he was a ghost of his former self, a replacement of the man who had walked before. It unnerved him, and brought home the fact that he would never be - for good or for ill - the man he was to her. Mentally he scrambled for another topic, something to say that would get her off this subject, something that would wipe that look off her face. "You never told me what happened to the others," he finally said, settling on that. "The rest of the U.N., or whatever the fuck they called us."  
  
At least that made her smile faintly, and glance away as if discomfited. "Well, you know what happened to Static."  
  
"Yeah." According to Xi, he and Static - or sometimes just him - were thrown into a larger strike force referred to derisively as the "U.N" because they were all from someplace else: Static was from Ireland; he was from Canada; Xi was from China; Timebomb was from Scotland; Inferno was from France; Shrike - who was apparently a periodic member before his "breakdown" - was from America. They did several "strikes" together, but so far she had only told him about her first one, in Tunisia.  
  
She sighed, running a hand through her sleek, short black hair, ruffling it like feathers. But no matter how messy she made it, it always settled itself down again within a minute or two. "Juliet apparently could not take as much as everyone - herself included - thought she could. She got ill after Tunisia, and a month later was diagnosed with a rare but aggressive form of cancer."  
  
He didn't know the woman - he certainly didn't remember anything like a French flame thrower - but he still felt a twinge of pity. "Radiation exposure?"  
  
Xi nodded. "It seems that way. She died a couple weeks after diagnosis; it was pretty fast. It was shocking for me, because I didn't realize mutants could get cancer. I guess I thought we were above such mundane illnesses, you know?"  
  
No, he didn't know. Illness never occurred to him much, because he didn't get sick. He was probably exposed to as much radiation as Juliet, right? And he was still ticking along just fine ... but then again, that was his power, wasn't it? "What about Timebomb? He was there with us, right?"  
  
"Yes, but he didn't go into the deeper areas, where there was greater radiation. He seemed fine. A little over a year later, though, he was on the end of a bad ricochet during a fire fight."  
  
"How bad?"  
  
Xi touched a finger to the center of her forehead. "Blew out the back of his skull. It was like his head just popped, like an over-inflated balloon - " She paled slightly, but he didn't know if it was her own description or her memory of the incident that caused it. "It was like he used his power on himself, but I don't think that's possible. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."  
  
"I know that feelin'." He let a moment of silence slip by before he asked, "What did Shrike do for the team, exactly?"  
  
She glanced up at him, slim dark eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. "You didn't know? I thought you had encountered him since then."  
  
"I did, but he wasn't very sane." He wondered if she knew he was dead, and who killed him. She had to know he was dead, but the death was probably blamed on him. Which was fine, as far as he was concerned; Naomi was better off being forgotten by these assholes.   
  
She nodded in understanding, but still seemed a little unsettled by the mention of Shrike. "He was our telepath. He was only good at relatively close range, but from there he was ... he was extremely impressive."  
  
He heard the buried fear there; she didn't like Shrike, did she? He wondered if anyone did. "He wasn't on every mission?"  
  
She shook her head. "No, it was … occasional. He was only used in the field from time to time; he used to be very close with Control before his breakdown."  
  
"Occasional? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Static completely bollixed telepaths, right? That was part of her power? So didn't having her and Shrike on the same team strike you as kind of redundant?"  
  
She shifted uncomfortably in the chair, and he could see just a hint of panic behind her eyes. Perhaps she didn't like talking about him, or perhaps she didn't like where he was surely headed. "I'm sure there was a good reason. Control was nothing if not efficient."  
  
He grunted a sarcastic laugh. "I bet. Shrike was sent along for me, wasn't he?"  
  
She looked up at him, fighting to keep the surprise off her face. "What?"  
  
"To keep me in line." He wondered - in retrospect - how Shrike could have slipped inside his mind so easily, could have taken him over so easily … and how his mind could find "counters" for him almost as quickly. Now, he realized it was because his mind had been "run through" by Shrike before - and it was the same reason why he had a sort of "immune response" to him - familiarity breeds contempt. He just wondered how much Xi knew about that. "You knew I was brainwashed, didn't you?"  
  
Her hazel eyes widened, and her shock seemed relatively genuine … but at the same time, it really wasn't much of a shock, now was it? "No, you - I didn't - "  
  
"Oh, cut the bullshit," he snarled, feeling a surge of rage that warmed him from the inside out. "How much do you know, Xi? Do you know what they did to me? Do you know why?"  
  
She just stared at him, shaking her head, and he could feel the anger coursing through his veins, not just warming him but tensing him to fight, to lash out, to act or react. "Tell me what you want from me right now or I walk," he growled. "And I'll go through each and every fucking one of you to do it, if I have to. Just make me." He stood there, nearly panting, hands curled into fists at his side. He felt positively homicidal right now, like there was some dark serpent squirming inside his own mind, and he didn't know why.  
  
But goddamn if he didn't kind of like it. 


	3. Part 3

Xia levered herself to her feet, watching him like a poisonous snake that might strike any second. "I didn't know, Logan. If I had known I'd have … done something. You have to believe me."  
  
"Why?" He snapped, but he knew most of this anger wasn't aimed at her. He had no idea why he believed her, but he did. He decided to focus on another aspect of all this shit. "What do you want from me exactly? You don't just want me to find Magneto, do ya? You want me to take him on, don't ya?"  
  
The deer in the headlights look. Either he was perfectly on target, or so off target he'd ripped the conversational rug right out from under her. "We just want the information," she said, still looking floored. "We don't want to have to fight anyone."  
  
What the fuck was wrong with him? She was right. She didn't want to fight anyone. The others … he didn't know about the others … in fact, he was certain they were up to something. They probably just left her out of the loop. He was willing to bet his left nut Spider, Spike, and Chameleon were looking forward to a fight with someone - anyone. And he knew Quake was just looking for an opportunity to rip his head off, 'cause he didn't like Logan taking over his position as boss man ( although it was Xi's by right - for some reason, she didn't really want it), and he didn't like Xia being so close to him. ( Which begged the question why. Xia hadn't exactly clarified the nature of it, had she? And he had never pressed for answers … probably for the same reasons. ) "You don't," he corrected her. "You don't speak for the group."  
  
She studied him carefully, looking just slightly disappointed. Also, still way too pale. He could smell something peripherally, something off, but it was impossible to say what. It was probably illness, but not one he was familiar with, and not severe enough to be highly noticeable. "You still don't trust us."  
  
"Wow, you think?" Awareness that she was probably sick made him feel inexplicably guilty about venting on her. She was the only one among them worth a damn.   
  
"Have we given you a reason to distrust us?"  
  
He stared at her in disbelief. "Tell me who you used to work for again."  
  
Anger flashed briefly through her eyes, and he knew exactly what she was thinking: "You used to work for them too." But rather than say that, she glanced away, muscle in her jaw working as she tried to think of a better way to phrase it. She glanced away, as if the desk in the corner had suddenly become fascinating. After a moment, she finally said, "I'm not claiming we're the most … upstanding citizens, all right? But we all want to destroy Armageddon before it's unleashed. Our people have suffered enough."  
  
He grunted in agreement. "We caused most of it."  
  
She flinched, a high red color flushing her cheeks, but there was anger in her eyes, and her jaw muscles continued to twitch as if in seizure. But she took a deep breath through her nose before finally replying. "I know we did … we're trying to do what we can now, Logan. We can never alter our past, but perhaps we can atone for it."  
  
"Do you really think Spider has any interest in atoning for anything?"  
  
She glanced at him, and he wondered if she was finally going to let that anger out. Perversely, he wanted to get into it with her, he wanted to fight. Shit came out in arguments that wouldn't come out otherwise. But he watched the hostility die inside her eyes, and he got the sudden impression she felt guilty over him. Why? What was she lying about - or, conversely, what wasn't she lying about? "I won't lie to you; I worry about him. He's … the milk of human kindness is a myth to him. He seems to like … inflicting pain."  
  
"He likes killing. He's a fucking psychopath."  
  
She shrugged, acknowledging that but not quite commenting on it. "From what I understand, the … experimenting on Spider was more successful than it was on you."  
  
"What did they do to him?" He didn't actually accept that as an excuse for Clive being a complete psycho, but he was curious what they did to him. He was an upper class Englishman ( if what he said could be believed, he was in law school when his powers started to manifest in earnest ) who could climb walls and generally violate the laws of physics. He could also, somehow, alter his own internal center of gravity, jump really long distances, move at lightning speeds ( in short spurts ), and focus his eyes in a way that allowed him to see quite clearly for miles. He seemed to be stronger than average, but no great shakes. It was his ability to defy gravity and be preternaturally agile ( as well as his unerring sniping ability ) that seemed to be his lethal appeal.  
  
"He doesn't talk about it a lot. But I met him once, before … " she petered off, clearly not certain what they did to him. "… before he joined us permanently."  
  
"What was he like?"  
  
She almost shrugged, but thought better of it. "He was more stereotypically British. He was fairly reserved, almost embarrassed by his ability to alter his own personal gravity."  
  
"And now he's a complete fucking nut, flingin' himself around like a misfired bullet, and walkin' on the ceiling to scare the maids."  
  
"Well … I guess that's one way to put it."  
  
"So - what? They took his inhibitions away?" Is that what they did to him? He didn't seem to have any inhibitions to speak of … but there was a huge difference between no inhibitions and no morality at all. "Did they never figure that might be dangerous? And how the fuck did they do that anyways?"  
  
She shrugged with her hands. "Placement of mental blocks? Removal of mental blocks? I have no idea. I … kind of avoided the telepaths. They make me nervous."  
  
"You can block 'em out."  
  
"I can. But they still bother me."  
  
He stared at her, but she avoided his eyes, finally turning her back on him, shoulders rigid. It was then he understood what she was hiding, and he was more disappointed than angry.  
  
She knew. She knew they were fucking around with his head, but she was too scared to do anything or say anything for fear they'd find some way to fuck with her too. Could he really blame her? She was just a kid then, in a new country, with a new life she could probably not hope to fully comprehend. And she thought of them as her "family" - so, the family was abusing one of their own. What was she supposed to do about it? Looking back as an adult, she was ashamed of her own cowardice, but at that time she was just a scared teenager who could barely manage her own powers. He was the adult; more than that, he was supposed to be the indestructible one, the impossible man, her "hero". It was bad enough that he had feet of clay; it seemed he had a mind of spun glass as well, achingly fragile and frequently broken. He wondered how he could possibly remain her hero after that.   
  
Suddenly his anger towards her seemed foreign and out of place, and he could no longer remember what it was he got mad about. Was it anything? Now he felt like an idiot. "I suppose you ought to get outta here before Tom gets back and brings down the whole hotel when he figures out you're with me."  
  
She turned to face him, a thin smile on her face. She seemed relieved by the shift of the conversation. "He's not that bad."  
  
"He hates my fucking guts."  
  
He had to give her credit - she didn't deny it. "He doesn't know you. Ironically, he's not sure he trusts you."  
  
"Maybe he shouldn't," he said, and it was out of his mouth before he realized what he had just said. What the fuck did he mean by that? Even she looked puzzled by that comment. He could hardly tell her he didn't trust himself nowadays. Instead, he switched gears again, and hoped she wasn't keeping track of how scattered he was outside of "missions". "Look, Xi, are you okay?"  
  
She raised her eyebrows. "Pardon?"  
  
"You look ashen, and you smell a bit … off." Her eyebrows arched before he could add, "I mean like you're not feelin' well."  
  
"There's a smell for that?"  
  
He shrugged a single shoulder. "Kinda."  
  
She hugged herself again, the cold room doing her no favors, and seemed reluctant to tell him anything as she moved back towards the door. "It's just anemia."  
  
"Anemia?"  
  
"Yeah. Sometimes I get it when I use my powers too hard or too long. I'll be okay as soon as Tom brings me back my protein smoothie."  
  
"Anemia's a lack of iron, not protein."  
  
"There's lots of iron in protein drinks as well," she replied smoothly, giving him a faint smile. Was she being honest with him? He had no idea; he'd never smelled anemia before, and he had never looked to see how much iron was in a protein shake.   
  
"Take care of yourself," he said lamely, wondering, 'If we were lovers, why won't you tell me?'  
  
But if they had been, why wasn't he asking? Was he more afraid that they were or they weren't?  
  
As soon as she was gone, he sat back down on the end of his bed, and rested his head in his hands. He was handling this all wrong. There probably wasn't even a right way to handle this. In fact, he was a complete and utter moron. What did he hope to accomplish with all of this? This was a mistake; a huge, monumental mistake. ( Not precisely a first for him. )  
  
No - he had to focus. He was here to shut down this Armageddon thing - whatever it was - and make sure Xi's "friends" didn't hijack it for themselves, If he happened to learn a bit more about himself and his past, great. But that was all, that was it.  
  
So why didn't it feel like it was?  
  
He wondered what the fuck they were going to do now, and how hard he could bang his head against the wall before he put a hole clean through it.  
  
4  
  
Scott sat behind the wheel of his car, wondering if he could do this.  
  
This was one of those moments where Jean would tell him to focus on "clarity", but of course she wasn't here to tell him, and that realization just made everything that much worse.   
  
Through the windshield, it was a nice day. Sunny, clear, but unseasonably hot; the sun felt like a punishment. This was the type of weather where tempers frayed easily, where people got into stupid and often violent fights for no good reason at all. He kept the engine running so he could crank the air conditioner, but the cold, forced air didn't make him feel any better.   
  
Unconsciously he rubbed his chest, right where there should have been a bullet wound still healing beneath his shirt. Of course there wasn't; Bob had "healed" them, or did whatever the hell he did. He still couldn't believe him just telling someone something could make it happen, but he could still recall Bob telling him he had normal eyes - and he did. Just like that. Scott was ashamed to recall his panic attack upon being confronted with his eyes for the first time since before puberty, but he had not been ready for it. He liked to think he wanted normal eyes, but not again as opposed to also; he wanted to be able to switch on his powers when he needed them and turn them off when he didn't, but it didn't work like that.  
  
There were many times when he wished he didn't have his powers at all, but those were foolish thoughts, childish. This was a gift, no matter how it seemed at times, and he had to be grateful for them, even if they did pain him sometimes.  
  
He didn't actually recall the shooting itself. All he remembered was suddenly waking up in a hospital, with a male nurse moving out i.v. stands and telling him "A guy as well as you shouldn't be laying around here", while Bob, standing off in the corner in a bizarre t-shirt ( Sausage Victim? What was that - a rock band? ) waving at him like one of those tourists in front of the window at the Today show. Scott knew then something really bad had happened, but he didn't know if he could blame Bob for it or not. He wanted to, though.  
  
Until he found out that he could blame Logan.  
  
The Organization was responsible for these latest atrocities, and why was he surprised? They were good at being extremely horrible. But he still couldn't quite believe this was all over some stupid discs. The Professor felt this whole thing was a ruse, and he was willing to cede to his logic.  
  
But Logan had left. He had gone with them. That ... that fucking son of a bitch traitor. If it wasn't enough that they'd shot him and Storm, those fuckers were responsible for Jean's death. And Logan claimed to care for her, and yet he ran off with them the first chance he got. The coward, the cold blooded fucking monster. He had no sense of loyalty at all, did he?  
  
The Professor seemed to think it was more "complicated" than that, but he didn't really see how it could be. When it came down to it, Logan simply had a choice, and he chose to join the people that had hurt them all quite badly, and killed Jean on top of it. He simply showed his true colors there.  
  
Xavier didn't seem worried that Logan would give them vital information about them, mainly because the Organization already knew everything, But that wasn't the point! The point was … what was the point? Oh, yes - that motherfucker betrayed them, as casually as he bedded and dumped misguided women. The only thing was, he wasn't about to forgive, not like Xavier. Logan had put them through too much shit to do this and expect to get away with it.  
  
Xavier wouldn't look for Logan with Cerebro, saying he already had but couldn't find him, and he assumed the mutant who could project an impenetrable force field was "cloaking" him. Besides, Bob had just left, supposedly to talk to Logan, and, "If anyone can find Logan, it's Bob."  
  
But Bob wasn't going to do anything to Logan, was he? He'd probably help him, as he had the same kind of morality - meaning none. Xavier also told him before he left, "Don't be so hasty, Scott. I'm aware you're upset, but … things may not be as black and white as they seem."  
  
Bullshit. Of course he didn't say that to his face, and he was sure he was right ( to a certain degree ), but he also knew if Logan decided to saunter back - no matter what damage he had done - Xavier would welcome him back and probably forgive him, just like that. Scott wasn't going to allow that. Not after all that had happened, not after -   
  
( Jean. )  
  
- all the pain and misery he had brought to their door. If he thought he could betray them all and never pay for it, he was wrong.   
  
Before he left, he decided to try and get an idea of what exactly happened from Rogue, although god knew he didn't like grilling kids. Still, it seemed fortuitous when he found her out back with Bobby, Matt, and Brendan. Bobby had apparently missed "the action" and was sorry for it, but Rogue didn't seem all that unhappy about it .  
  
The dynamic between Matt and Brendan - and their dynamic with all others - had certainly changed. Matt used to live off of his pseudo "cool, dangerous guy" aura, and Brendan was his slightly nerdy but far more worldly ( and for some reason, he couldn't help but think of him as a better looking, PG-13 version of Ratso Rizzo in his youth - which he knew was unfair to Brendan, but he couldn't quite shake it ) sidekick. But when Scott joined them, Matt seemed positively withdrawn, avoiding his eyes and making no vague sexual innuendos or even attempting to posture and look tough in front of his friends, perhaps because he now knew he had blown it. When crap actually happened, it was Brendan who showed the guts; maybe he was freaked out too, but he acted in spite of it, and that made him the cooler of the two in the court of public opinion ( it probably didn't hurt that he seemed to kick a lot of ass ). Half demon or not, Brendan had a lot of potential, and Scott made a mental note of that. Checkered past and questionable genetics aside, there was little doubt he'd make a valuable team asset.   
  
Brendan's actual mutant ability ( unlike what most of the kids thought ) was eidetic memory, so he was able to tell him in perfect detail what had gone on after the shooting. He knew Marcus, a/k/a Scorpion, yet another one of Logan's shady, slippery "friends", had shown up, but at least he had saved the Professor from some Ressik demons, although who knew what he expected to get out of it. Xavier had also said, seemingly in Marcus's favor, he had "lied to spare Logan". Scott didn't ask from what ( whatever it was, Logan probably deserved it ), but couldn't see lying as much of a virtue. Sadly, a lot of Brendan's recollections were about Marcus, namely how he was "cool, but kinda scary", a sentiment that made Rogue nod in agreement. At least they found him too frightening to emulate in any fashion.  
  
Brendan was not in the final battle, so he could only give secondhand recollections from what went on, but according to Marcus, there was one mutant there who caused earthquakes ( didn't that sound familiar? ), and a "chick with some kind of field" that seemed to repel bullets and make her immune to telepathy. Convenient. He had no idea where Logan had gone; it seems Marcus left before Logan did, and Logan himself snuck out during the night ( just like the fraud he was ). The pet theory among the kids was he'd actually joined Marcus, and they were now hunting them down for what they'd done to him. It was crap, but he wasn't about to tell them that; he didn't care what they believed, as long as they weren't eager to run off and join him.  
  
But this left him at a loss. How to find Logan and his new ( old ) "pals", since Xavier couldn't ( or wouldn't ) help him. It was Brendan and what he was - and Bob and what he was - that inspired a line of thought that, under normal circumstances, he would dismiss. But things hadn't been normal for a long time, if indeed they had ever been.  
  
He still felt like a complete asshole, though, which was why he was sitting in his idling car, in one of the sadder enclaves outside of Westchester. It was a really pathetic street, the brownstones and offices all wearing their patinas of age and neglect like ragged clothing, Many windows were boarded over, while others had security grating that looked ancient, ready to crumble into dust as soon as someone gave them a good yank.   
  
The place he was looking for was a ground floor shop in a crumbling old brownstone converted into a small office building. The upper floors were devoted to what appeared to be - judging from the multicolored flyers pasted all along the block and on the utility pole on the corner - a custom printing and design business. The "business" he was looking for was underneath it, with a small blue striped awning shading its glass door from the sun. In flaking gold letters etched on the glass, was the barely visible legend "Gaia's Arcana". Oh, he felt like an idiot.  
  
The demon angle. Believing in demons was bad enough, but now he was intending to do business with one - and trust them. Man ….  
  
He tried to look at it this way. They had attacked him and several others, and supposedly a vampire had helped kidnap him, right? ( She was apparently dust now. It was not clear how that happened, but he wasn't sorry. ) And there was that thing about fighting a god … maybe. If he believed that, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. But he couldn't believe that demons not only existed but in such obvious profusion all around them, and few if any people ever bothered to notice. Okay, sure, this was New York, but come on! Only some demons could "pass"; the rest were as obvious as Helga, or that fly eyed guy who vomited super-corrosive digestive fluid on people. ( And what the hell had that been about? )  
  
And now he was about to do business with some. The irony didn't escape him that, while he didn't trust Bob, he still intended to trade on his name. Hypocrisy, thy name is Scott Summers.  
  
He killed the engine and pocketed the keys, forcing himself to do this thing.  
  
As soon as he opened the door, a tunnel of hot air like a blast furnace hit him. It wasn't just the sun pounding down from above, but the heat radiating off the cracked pavement, hot enough to melt tires. He could even feel it through the soles of his shoes. Too damn hot by half.  
  
By the time he reached the shelter of the awning before the door, sweat was beading on his brow and creeping down to the top edge of his visor. But when he pushed open the door, it was like walking into a meat locker - a meat locker that smelled of thyme and musky oils, sandalwood and something he couldn't quite identify; maybe graveyard dirt.   
  
Brass wind chimes announced his entrance, but the shop itself seemed empty. The interior was dark, due to the soaped up (?) semi-opaque windows, and was a seemingly "casual" by calculation: shelves of occult books and things he couldn't hope to identify lined the walls, while circular tables draped with scarves in lieu of tablecloths filled up most of the rest of the space. Sprawled on their surfaces were various items, and each table was devoted to a single thing: closest to him were tables holding "aromatherapy oils" and one holding "healing crystals". Jesus; he already felt ripped off, and he hadn't bought anything.  
  
Conversely, Ororo would have really loved this place.   
  
"Hello, and what can I do for you, young man?" A voice like a rusty hinge creaked.  
  
He spun rapidly on his heels, and found himself face to face with an old crone … man? Gender was instantly indeterminate, and the tobacco ravaged voice didn't help anything. It had a thick lion's mane of snow white hair framing a face covered with so many folds it could have been made with yellow crepe paper. The eyes seemed very strange; peering out of his/her face as if from out of a deep hole, they looked about forty years younger than the body housing them. And what he assumed were cataracts or glaucoma were in fact pupils - it had pupils as white as the rest of their eyes, defined only by a slender ring of black on the outer edge to distinguish them from the rest of the white of the eye. It wore a shapeless purple tunic that hid a narrow body, and could have been worn by someone of either gender. He vaguely recalled Bob saying something about gender and demons and gods - some didn't have a gender, did they? Well, not by Human standards at any rate.  
  
He … it chuckled faintly, sounding like a rusty porch swing. "Not accustomed to my breed, are you?"  
  
"No," Scott said, not sure what it was getting at, or how to approach this. Well, he had to stick to facts here; he couldn't let himself be stunned into inaction. "I'm accustomed to demons. I was looking for Forajo." It wasn't hard to find a demon bar; there was one two blocks away from the site of the old Seventh Level. Luckily there were Humans there as well, so he didn't feel more out of place or conspicuous than normal, and his plan went surprisingly easy - the bartender, who appeared to be a dead ringer for Evander Holyfield ( no wonder the atmosphere at the bar was so peaceful ), was in actually a demon, who told him if he wanted to find anything anywhere, Forajo at Gaia's Arcana was where you went. But the Evander demon hadn't said what Forajo was - or if it was a he or a she. Scott now understood that with demons, sometimes what they didn't say was as important as what they did say.   
  
The white haired demon dipped its creased, leathery head. "Tis I. What can I sell you today?"  
  
Did it actually say "tis"? He shook his head, and moved on to the topic. Again, stick to the facts. "I need to find someone. I was told you could help me."  
  
It spread its hands, gnarled like old tree limbs. It was almost easy to miss in their distortion that it only had three fingers, and a thumb almost long enough to be one. "Perhaps they were mistaken."  
  
Now it was time to name drop. "And here I thought Bob only lied about unimportant things."  
  
Ah ha; bull's-eye. It arched a single white eyebrow at him, dropping its odd hands to its sides. "Bob? Which one would that be? I know many Bobs."  
  
"Not like this one." He's the Bob of Bobs, he thought, grimacing at his own thought. What a horrible joke. Jesus, what was the name he'd heard used for him? Logan asked Bob about it once, but Bob never gave him a straight answer. Dray something. Dray shogun? No, but that was close … he was a vowel sound away, he was sure. "The drai'shajan," he added, pretty sure that was it.  
  
That did get a reaction even greater than the last. "And he wouldn't help you?" His voice rose on the last word, like he/she was excited or nervous.   
  
"I don't think he'd want to get involved in this."  
  
"Oh. Is this a bad thing? I would not want Bob coming back at me … "  
  
"No, it's not bad. It's just something he'd prefer to … distance himself from. His image, you know?"  
  
He cackled with a noise like a dying chainsaw. "Yes, of course. Plausible deniability."  
  
He forced himself to say, with as neutral an expression as possible, "Exactly." He always knew Bob was a slimy weasel.  
  
Forajo splayed his gnarled hands on the glass counter top, between a display of pentagram jewelry and shrunken head key chains in a wicker basket. His fingernails were thick and yellow, and somewhat claw shaped. Scott found himself wondering how much of this was demon, and how much of this was show for the customers. "I need something owned or at least recently touched by the person, and two hundred dollars in cash. I don't take checks."  
  
Shit. "I don't have it on me."  
  
"Can you get it?"  
  
He nodded, wondering if Logan had left anything behind. He probably hadn't. He never had that much to begin with; it was like the mere responsibility of inanimate objects was too much for him. Scott was pretty sure he couldn't even get in to look, not without garnering the Professor's attention - and if Xavier saw what was in his mind, it was over before it even began. So how was he going to do this?  
  
Get someone already on the grounds to do it for him. Look in Logan's room, see if he left anything behind. Rogue would do it, if he told her he was going to look for Logan, but didn't want the Professor to know, fearing … fearing that he might get caught in the crossfire. But Logan and Marcus weren't the only ones with a grudge against the Organization. At least that part was true.  
  
No! How could he even think of using Rogue like that, pulling a child into this scheme? It wasn't simply dishonest, it was a sleazy thing to do. But there was no way he could ask Ororo, as she'd probably figure out he was up to something bad when he refused to step on the grounds of the mansion and look for himself. But how else could he do this? And hadn't Logan betrayed Rogue most of all? Besides the Professor ( and Jean ), of course. Rogue, for some stupid damn reason, believed in him ( just like Jean had ), and here he'd gone off with - for all intents and purposes - the enemy, to do god knows what to any mutant ( or Human ) who stood in their way. Logan was probably having a field day with no one to hold him back, no one to point out killing was wrong. He probably should just wait until the evening news, and then follow the trail of bodies.  
  
"We close at six," Forajo said, grinning at him coldly. He had stubby little nubs of teeth, as yellow as candy corn.  
  
"Can I ask how old you are?" Scott wondered, curiosity finally getting the better of him.  
  
Forajo's grin grew so wide it looked like it might crack his head in half. "Would you believe me if I said I was five hundred years old?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Good for you; I'm twenty seven." He winked a ghostly white eye at him. "They want Gandalf crap, they get Gandalf crap."  
  
"You're more like the Crypt Keeper."  
  
That made Forajo laugh, and it was like a cupboard door swinging back and forth on a rusty hinge. "I like you Human. Ya know, I'm a make up artist. If you ever need to disguise yourself, keep me in mind. I ain't cheap, but I'm the best."  
  
"I can see that," he said uncertainly, heading back to the door. He didn't know how much of this was truth and how much of this was fiction, but he didn't honestly care. He just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.  
  
"Remember the terms, Human."  
  
"I got them," he said, and paused in the doorway to look back at him. It was literally like straddling the line between worlds - fiery hell and icy hell. "I'll be back before six."  
  
Forajo's eyes glittered like diamonds. There was something unsavory in them, a sort of sordid glee that made him feel instantly dirty. "I'm sure you will be. Bob waits for no man."  
  
Scott left, not even commenting on that. But he was strangely afraid to look back, until he crossed the boiling street and returned to the safety of his car, which had heated up rapidly in the brief time he was gone; it was like getting into a toaster oven.  
  
He started the car once more, if only for the air conditioning, and started to reach for his jacket on the passenger seat, which held a cellular phone in its pocket. But he paused, and wondered if he could really do this.  
  
Yes, he had to. He had to do this -  
  
( for Jean )   
  
- to show Logan that they weren't just another bunch of people he could use and throw away when he was done with them. Besides, who knew what the hell he was going to do with his old buddies? He could not only be setting mutant rights back twenty years, but he could be trying to trigger a full out species war. If anyone could do it, it was Logan. He was, at his worst, nothing but an animal; him and all those Organization friends of his.  
  
And Scott was going to find him and kill him if it was the last goddamn thing he ever did. 


	4. Part 4

5  
  
Logan knew he was no longer alone even before he opened the bathroom door, although he'd heard no footsteps, no opening and closing of his room door. Spider walking on the walls could explain the lack of footsteps, but even he couldn't crush himself into such a small package he could squeeze himself in between cracks.  
  
He braced himself for a fight as he looked out into the bedroom, only to find a man crouched in front of the t.v. cabinet, looking through the drawers. "No booze?" The man said, pained. " Why don't you stay in one of those good hotels, with the mini-bar and twenty dollar packets of honey roasted peanuts?"  
  
Logan sighed, wondering if it was too late to start hitting his head against the wall. "Go away, Bob."  
  
Bob looked at him over his shoulder, grinning at him like it was all a big joke. "I just got here. Don't I at least get a kiss first?"  
  
Logan pointed at the door, remembered he didn't come in that way, and gave up, throwing his hands up in frustration. "What the fuck do you want?"  
  
"Well … " he stood and turned to face him. "I think I want to ask you … " He paused to clear his throat, and then suddenly snapped, "What the fuck is wrong with you?! What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?!"  
  
He should have expected that. He sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest, not sure what else to do with them. It wasn't like he could punch him ( successfully ). But then his eyes became riveted to the words on Bob's t-shirt. "Sausage victim?"  
  
"Don't change the subject. What do you - " Bob trailed off, and looked at him curiously, cocking his head to the side, as if trying to stare through his skull. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"  
  
He glared at him. "You came all this way to ask that? You've never heard of the phone?"  
  
But Bob didn't take the bait. He continued to stare at him in that off putting way, that made him feel like a specimen under the microscope. "You have a big blank spot in your mind."  
  
Logan rolled his eyes. "No fucking duh, Bob. I can't remember shit."  
  
"No, that's not what I mean," he said, still looking straight through him. He then frowned, as if confronted with a puzzle he couldn't solve. "Have you had any more dreams about that energy thing?"  
  
Was there a connection between those two inquiries? If there was, he had completely missed it. "No."  
  
But Bob's eyes widened in surprise. "Jean? You've dreamed of Jean? Whoa."  
  
"Whoa? Why whoa?"  
  
"Just … you haven't had a lot of dreams about her, have you?"  
  
Why did he get the feeling that Bob had just hedged? What was he hiding? "No. Why is that notable?"  
  
Bob shrugged, dodging the question. Definitely hedging. "I wonder if it was really Jean. Did it seem like it to you?"  
  
That threw him. He considered what he could remember of the dream. "I'm … I don't know. She was frustratingly cryptic, so in that respect she was more like you."  
  
Bob smirked, appreciating the joke. "I promise it wasn't. I had dry cleaning to pick up this morning."  
  
Logan grunted an acknowledgement , but crossed the room to get his jacket, turning his back on him. Bob was just an added complication he didn't need right now. "Just chew me out and make it quick. I got shit to do."  
  
"What kind of shit, Logan? I mean, you have no idea what you're gonna do next."   
  
He glanced back at him and scowled. "Stay the fuck out of my head."  
  
"Can't help it."  
  
"Yes you can," he shot back, but knew instantly it wasn't true. If Bob could help it, he probably would. But he could ignore it if he chose to. And that's when he realized Bob could help him out in a major way.   
  
"How so?"  
  
Logan glowered at him. He hated it when he read ahead like that. "We have no idea where to find these discs that reference Armageddon. Can you find out? You seem to know everything, or at least where to find it."  
  
Bob shrugged, trying to be both humble and nonchalant at once, and only partially succeeding. "True enough. But why should I? What are your intentions?"  
  
He stared at him, wondering if this was some deadpan joke. "What?"  
  
"This is beyond revenge, isn't it? You are aware that if they catch on to your little ruse, you'll be in way over your head. I have no doubt you can take 'em - well, not forcefield girl, unless you get lucky - but man - "  
  
"It is not a ruse," he insisted angrily, pulling on his jacket so violently he almost tore the sleeves off. "I intend to help them find and destroy this thing - whether they intend to destroy it or not. I'll deal with the consequences whenever they occur."  
  
Bob continued to stare at him like he was made of glass, transparent for all the world. "What's with you and Xia? Why haven't you asked her - "  
  
"What did I say about staying the fuck out of my head?!"  
  
" - oh."   
  
Logan didn't like the sound of that "oh" - full of pity and understanding and acceptance, "You're deliberately trying to piss me off, aren't ya? What the fuck was that "oh" about?!"  
  
Bob smiled thinly, looking like he was trying to swallow something that tasted bad. "Guilt, the great equalizer."  
  
"I do not feel guilty!" He spat. "I haven't done anything to feel guilty about!" Mentally, he added "Yet." and knew he might as well have said it - Bob surely caught it anyways.  
  
"This is exactly why you both need to stop dancing' around the issue and just ask," Bob said, obviously ignoring him. "Why are you feelin' bad that you abandoned her to these people when it may not be that cut and dried? And guilt if you slept with her 'cause you think she was too young? You don't even know that you did sleep with her, let alone what the hell her age was at the time! Come on, man, ask her. Stop bein' a dick. I know you're scared - "  
  
"I am not scared," he snapped, expecting to be ignored again.  
  
Well, of course he was. Bob went on like he hadn't said a thing. " - but you're the one who wanted to venture into your past. You knew from the outset it couldn't all be good."  
  
"All be good? None of it is good!"  
  
"Mariko."  
  
He winced, and felt that alien surge of rage again. What would it be like to punch his claws through Bob? Could you punch it through flesh that was really just energy transmogrified into a shell? "That wasn't good, Bob. They fucking murdered her, and I … "  
  
"Snapped?"  
  
God, he wanted to kill him. "I killed every single fucking one of them. I'd have been better off not knowing."  
  
"Do you honestly believe that?"  
  
He snorted in disbelief, trying to rein in his anger. "Yeah, I do. At least then maybe I could've pretended I wasn't an adept killer before the Organization got ahold of me."  
  
Bob rolled his eyes, and threw up his hands like Logan was being the unreasonable one. "Good god, mate, have you ever given Prozac a whirl? I mean, if you've never had it before, it could work for a tick."  
  
"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"  
  
He crossed his arms over his chest, and scowled at him, his cobalt eyes seemingly nailing him to the spot. "It means when a guy who is nigh invulnerable gets suicidally self-destructive, I get worried."  
  
"I am not - " he began, but then just gave up. There was no arguing with Bob; he thought he knew everything, so fuck him. "Are you gonna help me or not?"  
  
Bob arched an eyebrow, gazing at him like he had just asked him to clean the toilet with his head. But after a moment, he said, "I find out where these things are, I expect you to think about exactly what you're doing."  
  
"You think I haven't?"  
  
"I think there's more going on here than you want to admit. Oh, by the way, Xavier's feelin' really betrayed over this."  
  
"Good, now he knows what it's like."  
  
"Fair enough." He let his arms drop to his side, and took a deep breath, seemingly steeling himself for something bad. "If I find something out for you, I want you to step back and take a good, hard look at what you're doin' to yourself, okay?"  
  
"Yeah, whatever." Whatever it took to get him the fuck out of here.  
  
Bob gave him that curious look anew. "What is it, Logan? C'mon."  
  
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and mentally counted to ten before answering. "Look, it's not that I'm not … grateful for all your help, okay? You've done more for me than Xavier, and I appreciate that. But I want to figure this thing out for myself, okay? Other people muddle things - "  
  
"And they can get hurt." Bob interrupted.  
  
He shrugged, wanting to get past that as quickly as possible. "Yeah. I gotta do this for myself, okay? If I get in over my head, I'll call ya, okay?"  
  
Bob nodded, but it seemed like he was humoring him. "Sure. I'll see what I can find on the discs for ya. Sure you don't want me to have a little chat with your friends? They'll never remember it."  
  
"Thanks, but no thanks." He knew it might be the smart thing to do, but right now he wanted to do this by himself, without others getting in the way or messing with his business. Was that so hard to understand?   
  
Bob nodded, and said, "Just keep in mind we are generally our own worst enemies. And seriously - look into a mini-bar." He gave him a Cheshire Cat grin, and just like it, he disappeared, although all at once. But he bet Bob could have disappeared in pieces if he had really wanted to.  
  
Logan stared at the spot where he had been just a moment before, and wondered why he didn't want Bob involved with this. He wanted to be left alone … but yet, here he was with a group. A group where he felt completely alone.   
  
Hardly a new thing, was it?  
  
He left his room, and headed down the narrow corridor, wondering where he could go from here. And why his whole life was a question he couldn't hope to answer.  
  
6  
  
Scott found himself studying the Slurpee as it melted, in spite of the air conditioning. It was a Coke one, so it wasn't a violently frightening artificial color, but still … a grainy pile of brown ice crystals. Hardly appetizing.  
  
Still, it was more interesting than watching the people come and go inside the 7-11. It was mostly young men in shorts today, with a few young women and some older people stopping in for their pack of smokes. He knew he was in no position to talk, but damn it if most men didn't have truly repulsive legs. There seemed to be two specific types: those with legs so skinny they were sticks, like bleached pencils with hair and blue veins like worms; then there were the types with legs so pudgy it looked like they had no knees, it was just a solid, puffy tube of meat from thigh to ankle.   
  
Men just shouldn't wear shorts. It was amazing any women consented to breed with them, if you thought about it. On the whole, they weren't a very attractive package, were they?  
  
Scott was tired of thinking about it; he was tired of thinking about anything except how he was going to get Logan and his Organization buddies. He didn't like sitting here, feeling guilty about feeding Rogue a line of bullshit, while a turd brown Slurpee in a brightly colored cup melted slowly in his lap.He wasn't sure if this was an incredibly lame attempt at cosmic justice, or proof that being a "hero" really wasn't nearly as glamorous as people were often led to believe.  
  
The passenger side door suddenly opened, and he was greeted with a flurry of activity and noise as Rogue clamored into the seat. "Sorry, it was hard getting away from Bobby and avoiding the Professor," she said, letting a small leather backpack thud to the floorboards. "My Slurpee?"  
  
He handed it over after she slammed the door needlessly hard, and she smiled and took the sweating cup with both hands. When he told her he needed something of Logan's to find him, and that he would be parked in front of the 7-11, she asked him to get her a Coke Slurpee. Rather than balk - which he knew he should have done - he gave into her minor blackmail, figuring she'd buy his story easier if he capitulated. "Thanks," she said, at least remembering to do that much. "Did you see if they had Moon Pies in there?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Moon pies?" She eyed him like he was a complete idiot. "I can't find them anywhere. It's like there's some kinda embargo preventing them from bein' imported North of the Mason-Dixon line."  
  
"They're bad for you anyways," he said, glancing out his window so she didn't catch him frowning. "Rot your teeth. So does Coke, by the way."  
  
From the way the silence lengthened, he guessed she was staring at him. Finally she scoffed, and asked, "Are you for real? C'mon, Scott, even you can't be that anal."  
  
He snapped his head back around to glare at her, and when he did, she seemed to realize she probably shouldn't have said that. She quickly looked away, sipping her drink as she glanced out the windshield, doing her best to look innocent. He considered chewing her out, but ah hell, why? The sooner she left, the better. "Did you find something?"  
  
She nodded, putting her cup on the dashboard before reaching down to unzip the backpack. His first impulse was to grab the cup - the condensation ring it would surely leave on the leather would ruin it - but suddenly he realized how stupid that was. So he got cracks in his dashboard - so what? Jean was dead, and Logan had betrayed them. Did a dashboard really matter?  
  
"Logan didn't leave nothing - " she began.  
  
"Anything," he automatically corrected.  
  
" - not even soap in the dish, ya know?" She went on, completely ignoring him. "He gives a new definition to travelin' light, doesn't he? I mean, I've done it, but I still need a change of clothes and my Walkman, for when I get bored. And let me tell you, when you're tryin' to hitch a ride, you get bored a lot." She pulled an object out of the bag, and gave it to him with a slightly triumphant, slightly sarcastic, "Ta da."  
  
He looked down at the object in his hands. It was a book with what appeared to be a man swathed completely in chain-mail on the cover; perhaps it was simply the back of his head. "Beowulf?" He said in disbelief. "Isn't this from the library?"  
  
She shrugged as she grabbed the cup from the dashboard. "I guess. You said something he touched would do, right? That was sitting in the middle of his bed."  
  
"Why?"  
  
She shrugged again, and he figured he got all the usable information out of her that he could. "Well, it wasn't his. You said it was from the library, right? Why would Logan take it with him?"  
  
So murder yes for Logan, but thievery no. Surely there was a logic there, but it escaped him.  
  
Rogue went on, her eyes bright with excitement. Maybe it was the caffeine and sugar, but she seemed to be in a chirpy mood today. "Isn't that, like, a poem?"  
  
He wasn't sure what she was referring to at first. "Beowulf?"  
  
"Yeah. I mean, it's a poem about a bunch of guys who defend a village and then go kill some creepy old lady in a cave, right?"  
  
He stared at her openly. Were they talking about the same thing? "What?"  
  
"I saw the movie version."  
  
"The movie version?"  
  
"The Thirteenth Warrior? There's this cool part where a guy's head gets lopped off, and blood just shoots up from where his head was - "  
  
He scowled at her, wondering exactly what Storm had been teaching her. Well, no, probably not Ororo's fault - Rogue always seemed to do her own thing. She'd absorbed Logan too many times, that was the problem. "I don't think that was the movie version."  
  
"Oh." She watched a man with pale pigeon legs go into the convenience store, sipping her melted drink, then said, "Why would Logan be readin' poetry?"  
  
He shrugged. "I was about to ask you the same thing." Maybe he had a need for a paperweight. He put the book on the dashboard, and when his insistent look wasn't enough, he added, "Thank you, Marie, but shouldn't you be getting back?"  
  
She shifted impatiently in the passenger seat. "I wanna come with."  
  
"What? No."  
  
"Oh, come on. I'm as bored as hell back at the school. And you know Logan will come back for me."  
  
Did he know that? Then why did Logan leave in the first place? "If Xavier thinks it's too dangerous for me to go after them, there is no way in hell - "  
  
"Please?" She tried her best pleading look.  
  
He ignored it. " - when hell freezes over Marie." In a way, he had expected this. He just hoped the lie held, and that she had anticipated rejection.  
  
"I can hold my own, you know," she grumbled, unhappy but accepting that ( whew ). "I'm not a child."  
  
"Yes you are."  
  
Her frown deepened, making her look older than she was. "Bob doesn't treat me like a child."  
  
"Bob doesn't count. He's hardly a normal Human being."  
  
"I know, that's what so cool about him."  
  
He sighed heavily, wondering if Rogue would ever get over her attraction to so-called "bad boys". It wouldn't serve her well in life, powers or not. "I have to get going," he said, doing his best to sound polite.  
  
Rogue made a dismissive noise, and reached for the door handle. "Yeah, well, say hello to Logan for me."  
  
"I'll do that," he replied dryly. He wondered if blasting him into next week counted as a "hello".  
  
She got out of the car, grabbing the now empty backpack off the floor and shouldering it, never losing the grip on her Slurpee cup. She glanced back in at him, and he was surprised to see a stern, almost motherly look on her face. "Now don't you do some smartass thing like try to hurt him," she warned. "You'll only piss him off. And Logan can't always control himself when he's pissed off."  
  
She slammed the door before he could respond to that, and he watched her disappear into the 7-11, probably in search of her beloved Moon Pies.  
  
Since when had Rogue gotten so smart?  
  
7  
  
Logan knew more accusations were flying his way, but he tuned them out as he scoured the traffic in the rearview mirror, looking for ... ah yes, there it was. Several cars back, and occasionally drifting over to the opposite lane, but there just wasn't enough traffic to conceal them.   
  
" - friend is exactly?" Tom continued from the back of the van. "If you contacted Xavier - "  
  
"I've told you a million times Xavier is no friend of mine," Logan snapped, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly there was a danger he would snap it. "And shut the fuck up already - we gotta tail."  
  
"What?" Xia asked, startled, glancing in the rearview. After a moment, her lips thinned to a grim line. "Black van."  
  
Logan grunted an agreement. "Anybody know these streets?"  
  
He was met with a resounding silence. Then, Spike asked, "Where are we again? Salem?"  
  
Useless; utterly useless. "Okay, Plan B then."   
  
Logan took a sharp turn down a neighboring street, trying to maintain a normal speed and not give away that they were aware of the tail yet. There wasn't a lot of traffic, and the Organization might feel that the potential civilian casualty rate was low enough that they could simply open fire from a distance. Logan had to figure out a way to get a drop on them before they wised up that they had been made.  
  
They were in a quiet downtown area, gentrified nearly to death, with Starbucks and convenience stores bracketing each block like sentinels on guard against less rarified invaders. It was still before the traditional lunch hour, so there weren't that many pedestrians on the sidewalks either.  
  
"I can take 'em," Tom said from the back.   
  
"And us as well," Chameleon scoffed. "You can't target a rift like that."  
  
He checked the speedometer: fifty two. And they were coming fast on another corner. If he was going to do this, it would have to be now. "Keep going for another two blocks," he said, as he pressed down on the gas, giving it a little more speed.   
  
"What?" Xi asked, looking puzzled. She was in the shotgun seat, and everyone else was in the back, mainly because she was the only one he trusted beside him, and the others didn't really trust him either.  
  
"Take the wheel," he said, reaching for the door handle.  
  
She lunged for the wheel before they could swerve completely out of control. It was a lucky thing it wasn't raining yet. "What? Logan, what - "  
  
But he didn't bother to answer, he simply opened the door as they took the corner hard, and flung himself out the driver's side door.  
  
He instantly tucked into a roll as soon as he hit the pavement, tried to control it, but at those speeds the impact was still jarring, enough to give his brains a good rattling. He felt stinging as his skin was ripped, heard a different kind of tearing, and hoped it was just his clothes and nothing more.   
  
He rolled up against the gutter hard, and scrambled to his feet, even as his consciousness continued to reel, and black spots exploded in front of his eyes. Still, he saw a six story building, and figured it would be good enough.  
  
Ignoring the startled looks of a few witnesses, he darted to the small brick coffeehouse, popping his claws.  
  
***  
  
"They've speeded up," Mack shouted over his shoulder, as he kept his eyes firmly on the road. A good thing, as he instantly had to swerve around a pedestrian. "Do you think we've been made?"  
  
"How much are we talkin' about?" Hanson shouted back. "Are they tryin' to lose us?"  
  
"I don't know," he admitted, as he took the corner hard. The dark blue van - a converted Organization small transport with all the trackers removed - was at the head of the street, stopped for a light. The light turned green almost the second he looked at it, and they were on their way again. But they weren't peeling away, and who stopped for traffic lights in the middle of a chase? So they couldn't have known they were after them. Unless they wanted them to think that …  
  
He hated hunting muties that used to belong to them; they knew too many of their tricks, and were in general far too savage. They had no qualms about killing anyone. Which was exactly why the unit in the back was already locked and loaded, just waiting for the signal. But Hanson hadn't told him how they were going to take down Wolverine, who seemed pretty resilient to having lead pumped into him, and Atomic, who was impervious to everything once she had her field up. He said there were "contingencies", but he didn't bother to add any more details. It made him wonder if they had these so called "contingencies" with them, or if it was simply to blow the gas tank and hope they fried with the rest of them.  
  
It was then that something hit the roof with a loud thud that bowed the metal in about an inch, followed closely by the three blades suddenly punching through, just inches from his head. "Fuck!" He shouted, jerking back from the blades and almost losing control of the van. "Wolverine on the roof!" Where the hell had he come from? The van was just up ahead; no one got out, and Wolverine wasn't one of the ones who could fly.  
  
The instant Wolverine started peeling the roof up like a pop-top, some douche bag ( possibly more ) opened fired, drowning out the sound of Hanson screaming, "Stop shooting! We're bulletproof, assholes!" Which meant the bullets, rather than penetrating the roof that Wolverine had yet to rip off,   
  
were zipping around the transport like angry, super-sonic wasps. He felt the wind from one pass centimeters from his face before it bounced off the bulletproof windshield and zinged back towards its shooter. He heard a noise like someone punching a side of beef, and felt something wet hit the back of his neck. He didn't dare turn around to look what had happened.  
  
But he couldn't anyways. He swerved the van to try and throw Wolverine off, but he did it too hard and lost control, and as the van jumped the curb and a wall filled his view, he stomped on the brakes and hoped they didn't lock up.  
  
Mack actually wasn't sure if they had or they hadn't. The front end crunched violently against it, and the air bag exploded in his face as the vehicle came to a glass breaking, metal rending, jolting stop. Someone hit the seat hard as he slammed into the goddamn air bag, which he instantly started to punch down. Who knew they'd make these stupid things standard in even their vehicles?  
  
There were some faint moans from the back, the rattle of equipment, and the whistle of wind through their sudden and voluminous sunroofs, but he didn't see Wolverine through them, or his gleaming claw tips still in the dark metal. "Pack up," Hanson barked, sounding a little shaky himself, but trying his best to bluff it away. "He's out there - hard termination protocol."  
  
"Out there?" One of the conscious men replied. Mack didn't know his name, and he didn't much care. The new recruits were often just cannon fodder; there was no point in getting used to them in any respect. "He probably got launched onto the next block."  
  
Mack had been thinking that too. The momentum of velocity would have tossed him off the roof and most likely into ( if not through - he had about a hundred pounds of adamantium in him; that stuff was pretty dense ) the building. Even that would jar Wolverine for a little while - but only a little while.   
  
He checked his side arm and pulled it as he opened his door and eased out, glancing up at the torn roof, just in case he was somehow still hanging on. It was possible … but the roof was too Swiss cheesed for him to hide anywhere on it. Now what had the briefing for Wolverine been? If you have to shoot, go for the face and head; a lucky shot might punch through his eyes and get through to his brain, or multiple hard impacts to the skull might take him out for a minute or two. Fire was a better weapon if you could find it, but they weren't given flamethrowers, so what was he supposed to do, lob a Molitov cocktail at him? Knives were useless, and if you had to engage in hand to hand, you might as well just kill yourself and save you both some time. If Atomic was out here too, they were so doomed it wasn't funny.  
  
The back of the van opened up, and the troops able to walk got out, breaking out into hard termination formation …  
  
Except for the sudden shouts and the random, staccato bursts of gunfire, which seemed to break up all semblance of order. He heard Hanson shouting for "convergence" before he went suddenly silent. They all went silent.. A body of one of the troops was tossed out into the street, still holding on to the shattered remains of his rifle. He couldn't tell if he was simply unconscious or perfectly dead.  
  
Oh fuck.  
  
"I don't want to fight," Mack shouted, aiming his gun nervously towards the back of the van. He wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't survive a fight with all those muties, and certainly not with those bloodthirsty monsters Wolverine and Spider.  
  
He stepped out from the side of the van, gun still raised, shaking like a newbie on his first mutie run, waiting for some mutie to show itself and try and kill him. That's why, when he was grabbed from behind, he yelped and fired spastically, finger pulling automatically on the trigger before the gun was yanked from his hand and tossed away. "I thought you didn't want to fight," Wolverine snarled in his ear, tightening his grip around his throat.   
  
Mack grabbed his forearm to try and take the pressure off his windpipe, but it was impossible; his arm felt like a steel ( adamantium ) cable. "I don't wanna die," he croaked, not bothering to add "and certainly not at the hands of a psychotic freak", but that was probably implied.  
  
"Don't you?" He snarled, clearly enjoying this. "Then why are you following us?"  
  
"Orders."  
  
He chuckled darkly. "Orders. It's always orders. What a handy excuse for the cruel." He jerked his arm back, pulling him briefly off his feet and even more briefly cutting off his air. "You know what I wanna do to you, soldier boy? I want to carve you up and spell out a message with your entrails. Do ya think your superiors will get the message then?"  
  
He was serious, wasn't he? Oh Christ. "Please don't," he gasped, almost sobbing.  
  
It was then that he felt a sharp pain in his side, and heard water patter down to the pavement … except it wasn't raining. He glanced down to see three of Logan's claws sticking through him, just shy of his kidneys, and blood streaming down his claws to the asphalt. "You have no idea what I want to do to you, boy," Wolverine growled in his ear, his breath hot and smelling of blood.  
  
It was then Mack knew he was going to die. 


	5. Part 5

"They might not get the message," Wolverine said in his ear. "But it still might be fun to turn you into a puzzle.They'll never put you back together again, will they Humpty Dumpty?"  
  
"Please don't do this," he begged, unable to keep from crying. He could feel his claws in his body now, and they hurt; maybe it was just because it was cold metal sticking through him, and it was such a foreign, eerie feeling that his brain could only interpret it as pain.   
  
"Why shouldn't I, you mewling little weasel? I'd be doing everyone a favor to remove you from the gene pool. You and all your kind … " He suddenly trailed off, and his grip slackened slightly; not enough that he had any hope of escape, but enough that he could breathe a little easier.   
  
Wolverine's claws retracted, and he shoved him down violently to the street, Mack barely catching himself with his hands before his face smashed into the macadam. "Tell your superiors that if they keep sending soldiers after us, I'm gonna hunt each and every one of 'em down, and stick their heads on poles on the White House lawn. I bet they won't get many recruits after that."  
  
He glanced back at Wolverine, putting a hand over his stab wounds, trying to staunch the blood. Wolverine looked wild eyed, with gore ( probably not his own ) splattered on his face and fragments of building plaster in his hair, but there was something wrong with his expression; it was a strange combination of bewildered and angry, lost and torn, hateful and scared. It was like he had just woken up and had no idea what was actually going on. How hard a shot to the head did he take?  
  
He was sure Wolverine was serious. But Mack wasn't sure if the guy even knew what he was saying or why, or if he had a sane neuron left in his brain. He looked completely mindfucked.  
  
"Are you gonna try and follow?" Wolverine asked, using anger as a shield for his confusion.  
  
"Fuck no," he admitted, trying to look out of the corner of his eyes for his gun. He wasn't going to shoot Wolverine unless the guy figured it would just be easier to kill him; he wasn't so stupid that he thought the gun would do him any good otherwise.  
  
The mutie must have believed him, or was simply growing unnerved by the amount of witnesses starting to gather on both sides of the street, as he simply grunted an acknowledgment and started walking away. As an afterthought, he retracted his claws, and someone on the near side of the crowd gasped, and they seemed to fall back, like awed troops in the face of an overwhelming enemy. Wolverine never even bothered to look back.  
  
Mack sat up, still grabbing his side, and wondered if a desk job was completely out of the question.  
  
8  
  
He wanted to kill something. He wanted to kill everything, in fact. And maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he was angry; but he wasn't. He just felt cold and intensely focused. People were just things in his way, means to an end … but he could only kill his targets. Killing others would inevitably attract attention he didn't need …  
  
What the fuck?  
  
Logan stopped and leaned against the wall of a bank, hands to his head. It was like he could feel a growing schism inside his own mind, some dark need rising up and leaving him feeling … almost dizzy. Or maybe that was just taking a header into the street.  
  
Was he crazy? Bob had said something about a blank spot in his mind. He could feel it; it was like another personality asserting itself. But so close to his own he could hardly tell.  
  
He was crazy. That explained so much.  
  
He staggered another block, still feeling dizzy, and wasn't surprised to find that the van had been parked at the curb in front of a post office. He didn't think he could drive, so he went around to the passenger side and got in. "They're not gonna follow," he announced, settling into the passenger seat.  
  
Xi looked at him in muted horror. "Did you - Are you okay?"   
  
He nodded, wiping blood off his forehead. He didn't remember where he'd gotten it, if it was his or someone else's. "Fine. Drive."  
  
She continued to stare at him, nonplussed, and even that asshole Clive looked in from the back. Considering how high his head was, he must have been on the ceiling. "I could've helped," he said, giving him that cold smile that never reached his oddly flat, purplish black eyes. They looked like massive bruises in his pale oval face, which was topped by a messy mop of chocolate brown hair that often seemed to move of its own accord, like reacting to subtle shifts of gravity or static electricity. His thin lips were bruise violet and often twisted like worms in a frying pan, revealing slender, almost translucent white teeth filed down (?) to fine points. While he didn't exactly look like a spider, he hardly looked human either. Under different circumstances, Logan would have been willing to believe he was a demon.   
  
"I didn't - " He didn't want him to kill them all. Weird - why had he thought that? It was especially puzzling now since he didn't care. "In case I fucked up, I needed you here." Well, it sounded good.  
  
Clive's upside down head continued to leer at him, with a vacancy in his eyes and face that reminded him of Shrike. ( Why was he thinking of Shrike? ) "Do you fuck up, Wolverine? I always heard you didn't."  
  
Why did everyone call him Wolverine? Only Xi called him Logan, and he didn't know why it bothered him at first. Because, right now, it didn't bother him at all.  
  
In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.  
  
***  
  
Sixteen years ago - Le Havre, France  
  
Xia was surprised to find that Logan had left the door of his hotel room unlocked. He seemed so security conscious it verged on paranoia, but usually for good reason. But, the mission was over, and who was stupid enough to go after him?  
  
Only after she had opened the door and walked in warily did it occur to her that it was unlocked because he was expecting someone.  
  
"I'm not sure I can take it anymore," he suddenly called out. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, and the air in the room was humid, suggesting he had been taking a shower. Even though they were in a hotel with a breathtaking view of the water, the curtains were drawn tight; he always drew the curtains tight if there was a possibility someone could see in. ( "Windows are a vulnerability," he told her once. "Snipers can see you, and you could never see them, until it's too late." ) The Organization had put them up in a fairly posh hotel for once, mostly due to its proximity to the docks - they'd been after an illegal mutant smuggling network that had been surprisingly easy to shut down. Almost too easy if she thought about it, so she tried not to think about it too much. "Holding it together is - " He paused, and she knew he must have realized she didn't smell like the person he had been expecting.   
  
After a moment, he pushed the door open further, and peered out at her, still using a towel to dry his hair. He was just wearing jeans - but newer ones, obviously, as they had no blood stains or tears - with another towel draped over his shoulders. "Somethin' wrong, Xi?"   
  
She found it difficult not to stare at his chest, or the water droplets still trailing down his skin, matting down his dark hair. She'd never seen anyone with a perfectly flat abdomen before, and it looked as taut as a drum. Did he appreciate how hard it was to look him in the face when he was half naked? Still, she forced herself, and wasn't sure she liked the look on his face. He looked tired, and his eyes seemed … old somehow. "I, uh, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to thank you for the present." As if he didn't know what he bought her, she raised her arm and touched the bracelet on her wrist with her opposite hand. It was multi-colored jade links, held together by gold and gold plated Chinese characters. They meant success, health, prosperity, joy, love. And she knew he knew what they meant. Jade itself - no matter its color - was symbolic of peace and longevity. It was a sweet gesture ( and probably an expensive one ). "I can't believe you remembered my birthday."  
  
He shrugged, and threw the towel he was using to dry his hair back into the bathroom. "I remembered the month; I forgot the day."  
  
"So did I," she admitted sheepishly. "Thank you."  
  
He shrugged again, not quite meeting her eyes. He went to the armchair by the covered window, and pulled on a white undershirt. "It was nothing, really. I just saw it in Taiwan last month, and I thought you might like it."  
  
Could wearing a sleeveless shirt well be considered a mutant ability? Because if so he had that one nailed down too. She tried to focus on what she came here to say, but was overwhelmed by the awkwardness of it all. God, she was an idiot - why did she think she could do this? ( And some jealous beast rose up in the back of her mind, and she desperately wanted to ask, "Who were you expecting? Was it Static? Are you fucking her?" She was stunned by the new bitterness she found in herself. )   
  
"Xi, what is it?" He asked again, spoiling her dark reverie.  
  
She glanced at him to find Logan watching her, facing her now. Maybe he had noticed how she was trying not to look at him undressed, and covered up just for her. Did she think it was modesty? She wanted to laugh, but bit down the urge. "What? I just wanted to - "  
  
"No you didn't," he replied, not unkindly. "I can smell you're scared. What is it?"  
  
Oh god, was she reeking of fear? She sat down heavily on the end of his bed, and hid her face in her hands., not wanting him to see her blush. But he could probably smell that too.   
  
She was just gathering her strength to talk when the most startling thing happened. Logan sat down beside her, not touching her but close enough that she could sense his body heat. He also smelled faintly of soap, which was probably deemed better than blood - oh, and salt water ( until now, she had no idea he could sink a double hulled ship with a single swipe of his claw - but why was that surprising ). "What's happened, Xi?" He continued, lowering his voice to a whisper. "What's goin' on? Was it the mission?"  
  
"No. I - " She didn't even know how to say it. She had psyched herself up, she had practiced in her head, and it was all ultimately worthless. "Logan, I … you know … " Damn her, she couldn't do it.   
  
"Has someone hurt you?" He asked, sounding concerned.  
  
"No. Do you - do you love me?" She finally spit out, feeling even more embarrassed than ever. She continued to hide her face in her hands, as if that would do any good at all.  
  
He shifted uncomfortably, and she listened to the bed springs groan under his weight. "Sure I do, Xi," he said, so nervously she wasn't sure if he was lying or simply uncomfortable with the words.   
  
"No, I mean … " What did she mean? She finally forced herself to look at Logan, and even in the gloomy room, with only incidental dim light from the bathroom illuminating the scene, she could see he was uneasy; he was afraid where she might be going with this. And she did the most stupid, most girly thing she could have done - she started crying. Now she felt like more of an idiot than ever.  
  
She was going to get up and bolt out of the room - she was a fucking moron - but then Logan awkwardly took her in his arms, and said, "It's okay, Xi. What happened? You know you can tell me."  
  
And that was part of the problem, wasn't it? She took the opportunity to settle against his chest, and hide her face in his neck. He patted her back awkwardly, and shifted uncomfortably again, but didn't toss her off. She could remember the first time he held her, when he carried her out of that place in Nanjing, and she realized that she had probably loved him since then, and that she would have loved anyone who got her out of there. She fought to get her embarrassing sobbing under control, and found the smell of his skin helpful to that end. He was tense, though, his muscles as tight as coiled springs, and she realized he was preparing to hurt whoever had hurt her. Her big bad protector, even though she hardly needed one. As soon as she was able to talk, she admitted, "I haven't been hurt. I just … " She sniffed, and moved her head long enough to wipe her runny nose on her sleeve. She then looked up at his still puzzled face, and admitted, "I wanted you to know that I love you." She then kissed him … or at least tried.  
  
"Whoa," he said, instantly holding her back at arm's length. "Honey, no. You know I care for you … but not like that."  
  
"Why not?" She asked, and instantly hated herself for it. Hadn't she embarrassed herself enough?  
  
He gave her a sad smile, and she suddenly wondered if he thought she was silly. "Just to start with, I'm so much older than you."  
  
"You're only thirty."  
  
That made his smile broader and sadder. "Thirty? Do you know how long I've been thirty, according to the Organization's files? They say it's a simple computer problem, that 'cause there's no birth date listed for me, my age never advances. But truth is, they don't know how old I am, and neither do I. I'll always be thirty, forever and anon, 'cause they don't know what else to say."  
  
And that was another segment of the problem. He was so perfectly constant. People died - with alarming regularity, especially around the Organization; it was almost as if mutants were an expendable commodity - but not Logan. He didn't age, he probably would never die; he'd probably outlive her. That should have been a frightening thought, but she found it strangely comforting. At least she'd always live on in someone's memory. "How old do you think you are?" Her continued embarrassment was briefly forgotten, overwhelmed by her curiosity about his supposed and true age.  
  
He chuckled bitterly, as if it was yet another topic he wasn't totally comfortable with. "A damn sight older than they say. I feel … too old. I think … I think I shouldn't be around anymore, ya know? But here I am."  
  
She sat back, and he let her go, no longer concerned that she'd molest him. She wiped away more tears and snot with the back of her hand, and asked, "What do you mean you think you shouldn't be around anymore?"  
  
He glanced away, as if he couldn't bear to look at her. "I should be dead, kiddo. Sometimes I feel like I'm livin' on borrowed time - borrowed from someone else. I shoulda left a long time ago."  
  
It was almost as if he'd morphed into another person right before her eyes. Her brave Logan was transforming into a suicidal, depressive man with a death wish. She could have wept. When had this happened? Was he always this way? "Don't say that," she said, almost beside herself with grief. She felt like she had loved him forever, but now she felt queasy, as she realized she may have never known him at all.  
  
He gave her a thin smile, possibly encouraging or reassuring, but it failed on both counts. "Don't you worry, hon, I ain't walkin' out on ya. We're all we've got, right?"  
  
She nodded, and suddenly very much wanted to leave. If making a fool of herself wasn't bad enough, now she had come face to face with a Logan who was not her Logan. There were two - there must have been two - and she was no longer sure which one she loved, and that alone made her feel hideous. No; he was Logan/Wolverine - any division existed only in her mind. ( Right? ) "I - I'm sorry - " she stammered nervously , getting to her feet.   
  
He shook his head. "Don't worry about it, darlin'. We all get a little mixed up at times."  
  
It was only when she reached the door did she realize he was referring to her trying to kiss him.   
  
Once she was back in the hall, she leaned against his closed door, and tried to gather whatever dignity she had left. She took a deep breath through her nose - a calming technique he had taught her - and struggled not to start crying again. What the fuck was wrong with -  
  
- ( him ) -  
  
- her?  
  
"Is there a problem, my dear?" A voice said, mocking and silky with malice. A familiar voice.   
  
She opened her eyes with a jolt, and saw Shrike standing at the end of the red carpeted hallway, He was giving her a lopsided, toothy grin that belied eyes that were as hard as stone, and glittered like diamonds in the sun. "Is Weapon X not acting like himself?"  
  
"What?" Why did he call Logan that? Wolverine was his code name.  
  
He started stalking down the hall towards her, as predatory as a tiger. She put her field up, if just to keep him out of her head. He must have noticed, because he chuckled coldly, sounding like a machine just starting to run down. "No need to be afraid of me, chickie pie. I ain't gonna hurt ya."  
  
"When did you get here?" He wasn't among the strike team - it was just her, Static, Reaper, and Logan.   
  
But he didn't answer. He just continued to grin at her like a shark closing in on its prey, and said, "Reaper reported that poor Wolverine was falling to pieces. I'm simply here to put him back together again."  
  
She almost asked "What?" but held off, as she realized exactly what he meant. She could recall all those times Logan seemed so out of it in combat situations, and how he was in there. What was the telepathic brainwashing, and what wasn't? What if the person she loved was just a façade?  
  
No, she couldn't believe that. Logan was the bravest man she'd ever known. There was no way in hell that was just an implanted personality.  
  
He couldn't be reading her mind, but he leered at her like he had. "Do you know what your precious Logan was before I got a hold of him? He was a loser; a fucking emotional train wreck. He hid himself away and played mountain man, so he never had t o have any contact with people or the outside world." He suddenly adopted a whiny, high pitched voice. "Oh, I'm a mutant, and I've been abused, and I've lost everyone, why don't people leave me alone, wah wah wah." Shrike went back to his normal voice, which was hardly any better. "Such a fuckin' pussy. A waste of talent. The Organization trained him, gave him money, shelter, a rep for Christ's sake, and he tried to throw it all away like an ungrateful brat. But nobody leaves until we say they can - and Weapon X is ours. We made him. We keep him until we destroy him."  
  
He was insane. There was an emptiness behind Shrike's eyes that suggested he had been mindfucked himself, until he had no semblance of reality left to access. There was no way anything he said could be true. ( Was there? )  
  
"Don't you worry your pretty little head, Suzie Wong. I'll give him a brand new trigger."  
  
There was the soft chime of the elevator doors opening, and Static stepped out, pausing as she saw the tableau of Shrike advancing and Xia frozen against Logan's door in abject terror. Her white eyes narrowed, and she must have "pinged" Shrike with her powers, because he suddenly winced and grabbed his head. "Stop tormentin' the girl," the Irishwoman said angrily. Xi always thought the reason she was regularly teamed with Logan was because she was just as fearless as he was, but now she was beginning to suspect there was more to it than that. She admired her, so she hated the sudden surge of jealousy she felt towards her.  
  
Static stood between the elevator doors, keeping them opened, and motioned for Xi to join her as she kept her stern, seemingly sightless gaze on Shrike. Although he leered at her as she snuck to the lift, he didn't dare move for her, not with Static there. Her powers could put telepaths in a world of hurt, not just shut them down, and Shrike probably knew that all too well.  
  
Xia got in the lift, standing well behind the protective shield of Static, and Shrike shifted his leer to her. "Are you here to see Logan? Sorry hon, but I gotta see him first."  
  
"We'll both see him," Static insisted. Even though she knew Logan could kick Shrike's ass with both his hands tied behind his back - and she currently hated Static, if only because she was involved with Logan somehow - Xia hoped Static went with, if only to protect Logan from Shrike's telepathy.  
  
But he shook his head, and his smile turned gloating. "Nope. Priority clearance, Reaper's orders."  
  
"I have priority clearance."  
  
"Security clearance X-13? No, I didn't think so. You can check on loverboy later, Sloane. As soon as I'm done with him."  
  
Xia felt her stomach burn at the mention of Logan being Static's "lover boy". But he was probably just being the mean bastard he was; that taunt alone didn't prove anything. After all, had she ever seen anything even remotely affectionate pass between Logan and Static? They always seemed to be the consummate professionals, all business.  
  
Shrike resumed stalking down the hall towards Logan's door, and she felt mildly relieved that he was moving on, even if she did feel bad for Logan having to deal with him. ( What was that "brand new trigger" crack supposed to mean? ) Static was not only unimpressed, but by the way her hands curled into fists, she was seething. "I hope he kills you someday," she snapped.  
  
Shrike glanced back at Static with a self-satisfied grin. "Now now, I'm the Shrike - I'm the only one who does the killing around here. And I'll outlive all you peons; mark my words."  
  
Static cursed under her breath and backed into the elevator, violently punching her floor button, as Xi retreated into the far corner.   
  
There was so much going on here she didn't get. She wondered if any of it would ever make any sense.  
  
9  
  
Logan was trying to decide which of the crappy American beers in the cooler would be more palatable when he noticed the shift.  
  
It was just a feeling at first, undefined but unsettling, and then his first obvious clue was served: the convenience store muzak. It had been playing a watered down version of an already watered down "Margaritaville" ( it struck him as ironic for a gas station mini-mart with an entire back section devoted to beer and malt liquor ), and then, just as he was looking through the beers for at least a Moosehead, he realized the music had gotten a lot more bouncy. Actually, way too bouncy - suddenly it was The Propellerheads.  
  
"I hate muzak," Bob said behind him. "But then again, you've been to my hell; you know that."  
  
Logan sighed and turned to face him, cooler door still open. "Can you make a decent beer appear?"  
  
"What? Like that?" He said, gesturing with a nod of his head.  
  
Logan glanced back, and saw a single six pack of Castlemaine XXX sitting on top of the Budweiser. "Thanks," he grunted, grabbing it and letting the door swing shut. "You got something for me so fast, or are you just here to annoy me some more?"  
  
Bob crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned back against the bottles of margarita ( ha! ) mix and boxes of wine. Somehow he didn't knock it all over. "Tired of your companions already?"  
  
"I've been tired of all this shit forever. Have you got something for me or not?" They needed gas anyways, and Logan not only needed the beer, but the peace. He'd had enough of them for one day. He felt like he was trying to crawl out of his own skin, and he didn't know why.  
  
Bob grinned, flashing his teeth at him. A heavy-set white guy in a grease stained STP shirt walked passed them, grabbed a six pack of Bud, and walked off, never glancing at either of them, or even noticing the techno dance music blasting from the ceiling. Bob must have made them insignificant. "Patience, patience. As it is, I have loads of good connections, and, for some reason, whenever I ask for something, they hop to like roos on crack."  
  
Logan supposed that was supposed to be funny, but he didn't laugh. He simply raised an eyebrow, and waited for him to be serious.   
  
"Oh, you're no fun anymore," Bob complained sarcastically. But at least he finally got to the point. "Seems your friends may not have been as bright as you thought - or perhaps more bright than you expected. Depends on how you look at it."  
  
"Bob," he said impatiently.  
  
"Cool your jets, Roger Ramjet, I'm getting there." Roger Ramjet? "So this Mystique - killer figure, by the way. But then again, I have a thing for primary colored women - took the copies of the disc, yes, but unless they kept a copy of the disc for themselves, they don't have them anymore. They sold them."  
  
He didn't know why, but he found Bob hard to follow. He had to consider his words carefully for a moment, then said, "Sold them? To who? Why?"  
  
"Who else? The ubiquitous "foreign interests" - opposing governments, allies, and/or terrorists. They got about a cool mil for them, so wherever Chuck's buddy Erik is, he has himself some working cash. Now, I gotta hand it to them there; that's strategy. You wanna rebuild an empire, you need untraceable capital."  
  
It really was hard to focus on his words. Maybe he was talking too fast, or the Propellerheads were simply too loud. "What are they gonna do with Organization files? Are they aware of Armageddon?"  
  
"I doubt it - it seems that Mystique and Co didn't even know to look for them. But don't you worry about the discs; I'll go buy them back. Well, I'll make people think I'm buying them back. Same thing."  
  
"So we still have no idea where this is?"  
  
"Death Valley."  
  
Logan stared at him, sure he missed something. The song had switched to a slower Radiohead song, which made it easier to think, but made Logan feel as though he had experienced a gap of lost time. "Huh?"  
  
"The Organization used a front company as a tax shelter, and to work on "projects" in secret, away from prying eyes. This front company was known as Canmer Mutual Industrial Technologies, or MuTech for short."  
  
"Cute."  
  
"I know. They owned the property where Alkali Lake was situated. They own seven acres of desert in Death Valley. Now, I haven't gone out there yet, but they don't own any other property that's unaccounted for. In fact, they tried to hide the purchase of the Death Valley land by buying it not in MuTech's name, but in the name of one Vasely Petrovich."  
  
It took Logan a moment to place the name, but finally he did. "The thing that took over Reaper?"  
  
"Got it in one."  
  
"But you took care of him, right?"  
  
"I did; made him plain old normal. But the purchase is in his name, Logan - it doesn't mean he had anything to do with it."  
  
"They just borrowed it."  
  
"Bingo." After a pause, he said, "I really think I should come with you. This could be very bad, Logan. You might need me."  
  
He knew that, but he didn't want to hear it. "Got a cell phone?"  
  
Bob reached into the back pocket of his leather pants, and pulled out a small phone he knew for a fact there was no room for. He tossed it to him, and Logan caught it with his free hand, never loosening his grip on his six pack. "I'll call ya if I need to, okay?"  
  
"Will you?" Bob asked skeptically. But after a moment, he smiled, and said, "Ah well - it's not like you can shake me, is it?"  
  
"Tell me about it." He grumbled. He tucked the phone in the pocket of his jacket - noting it wasn't a good size for flushing - and then thought he should say thank you. Nosy or not, Bob did seem to help him, and he knew when to butt out … well, sometimes. "Look - " he began, but when he looked up, Bob was gone. Now Logan was relatively sure there was a slip of time, a gap that was almost palpable. Had Bob done something to him, "pushed" him?   
  
If he had, what the fuck could he do about it?  
  
As Logan walked towards the front counter with his Castlemaine, wondering what the clerk would charge him for it, he realized Radiohead was still playing out overhead, repeating over and over, "I will eat you alive, I will eat you alive," in a quiet, menacing drone. Logan wondered if that was a last warning from Bob, or simply a coincidence. 


	6. Part 6

Dakar, Senegal - Sixteen Years Ago  
  
She hadn't seen Logan since Le Havre, and Xia hadn't been able to get any information about him from anyone.  
  
It didn't help that she'd been in the company of Reaper. He gave her the creeps. Not as badly as Shrike, but he was an arrogant know-it-all, and all he would say was Logan was on a "private mission" (whatever that meant), and out of contact, as it could "compromise his cover". It sounded so much like bullshit, but Reaper seemed to make sure she couldn't reach him - or anyone, in fact. He told her it wasn't good to become too "attached" to teams. "Although often people of complimentary abilities are put together, there are times when that won't work," he said haughtily, as they were somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. "And then there's our unfortunately high turn over rate." He had grinned at her then, all teeth and no warmth. "Ours is a dangerous business."  
  
And as far as she could tell, all Reaper did was go to secret meetings with dubious people while she waited out in the foyer or walked the grounds. When she asked why she was along at all when she had nothing to do, he told her she was acting as his "bodyguard" - as if Reaper needed one! She had thought about it - she had had a lot of time to think - and decided there was only one reason why she was tagging around as Reaper's personal assistant: they wanted her away from Logan. Why? Had Shrike seen something in her mind before her field went up, something Reaper didn't approve of?  
  
(But if he didn't approve of "fraternization", why didn't he do something about Static and Logan? Or himself and that Italian girl, whatever her code name was this week?)  
  
Reaper had told her the point of meeting in this French Colonial style hotel, at least. (Dakar seemed chock full of French Colonial buildings; it was almost like being back in France … except, of course, it was about one hundred degrees.) He told her she had the "day" (what was left of it) off, as this was simply a meeting with operatives who had been in the field. Since they were meeting in a somewhat public place, she guessed they were now being brought back in.  
  
She really didn't care. She was tired of Reaper and his superior bullshit, and she just couldn't wait to go somewhere else and do something, and she didn't care who she got teamed up with, as long as it wasn't him (and Shrike). Her plans were just to lounge around in her air conditioned hotel room and maybe sleep until evac, but then she caught the tail end of a conversation Reaper was having with an unknown party: " - I don't want Weapon X storming in here and tearing up the joint. What the fuck is the trigger for docility - "  
  
Weapon X. What Shrike called Logan. Did that mean he was here? He was one of the ones coming in?  
  
(Again with that word:' trigger'. Trigger what? It wasn't like he was a trained animal that could only respond to commands.)  
  
So she spent her day at the hotel bar, on a stool with a great view of the lobby. She had a feeling Logan would gravitate towards the bar, but just in case, she wanted to be able to spot him. She had butterflies in her stomach, and she had no idea why. Except …  
  
… what if Shrike had done something to him? Oh, come on, she was kidding herself - he had done something to Logan. But what and why?  
  
She had never been much of a drinker, but she discovered she liked rum and coke. One seemed to settle her queasiness, so she had another. Soon she was feeling warm and confident. Whatever Shrike had done to him, she could undo - her field was resistant to telepaths. She could protect Logan with her field, or - better yet - beat the shit out of Shrike with it until he agreed to undo what he had done, If he had done something. But he must have - why did Reaper mention "trigger", like Shrike had?  
  
She saw one operative she recognized pass through the lobby, but she had yet to see Shrike, which was good. Maybe he wasn't here. But if he wasn't … what did that mean for Logan? Was he all right?  
  
Xia had just gotten her third rum and coke when she saw a man who could only be Logan in the lobby. What was with him and leather? In heat like this, it was an obvious giveaway he wasn't normal.   
  
She hurried out to the lobby, and called out "Logan!" as he entered an elevator, but he didn't seem to hear her. But she managed to get an arm between the elevator doors before they completely shut, and they gasped apart so she could get inside. "Logan," she said, smiling, happy to see him.  
  
But he simply glared at her, chin down and eyes up, his blue eyes (blue?! Where was the green?) hard and scrutinizing. She was so shocked by his angry demeanor and lack of recognition she stayed silent as the doors shut behind her, belatedly realizing she didn't want to be in an enclosed space with him right now. She jumped when he finally said, "You're an operative, aren't you? One of ours."  
  
For a split second, she considered the possibility he was joking, just kidding around with her, but the look in his eye had no humor at all. The lift started to rise in a slightly juttering manner, and she worried that it might be old as the hotel itself. But what could she do about it now? "You don't recognize me, do you?"  
  
He grunted, and she wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean. "Yer one of ours. I memorized the faces."  
  
She stared at him in disbelief. He really didn't know her? Except as a face in a file? What the hell had happened to him? "Logan - "  
  
"Why are you calling me that?" He snapped.  
  
"That's your name."  
  
The elevator shuddered to a stop, and he glared at her until she stepped aside and cleared the way for him to leave. "I don't have a name," he growled as he stomped out. "I'm just Wolverine."  
  
Holy fuck. What had Shrike done to him?  
  
She quickly followed him, horrified and curious. He simply went to his assigned hotel room and slid the key card through the lock, aware she was there but more or less ignoring her. "I'm Atomic," she said, hoping that rang some bells for him. "Xia Zhang. Remember?"  
  
He shoved the door open, pocketing the card and never looking back at her. "Remember what?"  
  
She was able to catch the door before it shut in her face, and followed him inside. "You can't be serious."  
  
The first thing he did was shut the drapes on the glass doors of his balcony, cutting off the remaining sunlight and damning the neat hotel room to a murky gloom. At least that hadn't changed about him. "I ain't in the mood to fuck around, darlin'. What is it you want?"  
  
He really didn't know her anymore. She felt so weak in the knees she sat down on his bed, and the rum and colas suddenly roiled in her stomach. Oh god, she really didn't want to barf and have that be Logan's first (next) memory of her. She propped her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. "I can't believe you've forgotten me. Don't you … what's your first memory?"  
  
"My first memory?" He said it so derisively she looked up. He was sneering at her like she was a bad comedian he was about to sling a bottle at and jeer off the stage. "What? Who the fuck cares?"  
  
"Shouldn't you?"  
  
He just stared back at her, but a brief, uncomfortable look flashed across his face. She realized then, her heart sinking, that she really had missed him badly. She fucked things up so badly with him. Maybe there was a second chance here; some sort of redemption for her being a complete chickenshit, on top of a lovesick teenager and a basic disappointment to him.  
  
She pointed to the jade bracelet, which she always wore, except when it would interfere with something she had to wear for a mission. It was really the only present she had ever received, and she considered it a good luck charm, as well as a gift from the nicest man she knew. Well, perhaps now that was past tense - had known. "You bought me this in Taiwan, for my birthday. Don't you remember?"  
  
His strangely blue eyes scudded over to her wrist, and studied it for a second before looking back at her. Blank; there wasn't even the slightest glimmer of recognition. (Why had his eyes changed? Did they do more than mindfuck him? Was it also chemical? Physical?) "No." he scoffed. "What the fuck are you, my girlfriend?"  
  
"Yes." It was out of her mouth before she realized what she said. It was the alcohol talking, or at least she told herself it was.  
  
He quirked an eyebrow at her, as if he didn't believe her, but his lips curled up in a faint smirk, like it was almost funny. "Really? Where's my welcome home kiss?"  
  
"Come and get it." What was she was doing? Did she really hope this would snap him back to his senses? Or was she hoping it wouldn't?  
  
He stalked over, letting his leather jacket fall to the carpet, and her heart started to trip-hammer in her chest. What the fuck did she think she was doing?  
  
He paused, as if daring her to admit she was lying, and then kissed her, harder than she expected, and his rough stubble scraped her face almost painfully. But the kiss was much nicer than she expected. Much nicer.  
  
Somehow she ended up laying on the bed, him on top of her. He was heavy and warm, kissing her almost violently, and she was groping for the buttons on his shirt before deciding she didn't care and simply started tearing his shirt, pulling it up his back.  
  
This was wrong; this was so very wrong, and she knew it. But it didn't stop her.  
  
10  
  
"Hmm."  
  
Scott glared at him, but since he knew the thing couldn't see beyond his visor (and even if he could, he probably couldn't give a shit), he asked, "Is this some obscure demon language you think I should know? For the past five minutes all you've been saying is hmm."  
  
Forajo glanced at him without bothering to raise his head, his long white hair framing his deeply creased face like a wimple. "This takes times, Human."  
  
"What takes time? You conning me out of my money?" He threw up his hands, and shook his head at his own stupidity. "I can't believe this. I'm a moron."  
  
"I am not a con artist," the demon make up artist groused in his rusty voice. "Now be quiet and let me concentrate on the portents."  
  
"The portents?" Scott repeated in disbelief. They were in the back room of Gaia's Arcana, a small storage space where boxes and crates of god knew what were shoved to the side, opening up a wide rectangular space on the scuffed and dusty wooden floor. On it, Forajo had drawn a chalk circle and placed, in the middle, a tiny chafing dish full of what looked like cigarette ashes. But he had yet to do anything with that; mostly he had just cast the "portents" around it, after holding Beowulf in his hands for a while and saying a few words that Scott would swear were a mispronunciation of the opening lyrics to Edelweiss. "The portents are bleached chicken bones and marbles you stole out of a Hungry Hungry Hippos game!"  
  
The demon scowled at him, making extra folds appear in his leathery face. (He had to admit as make up artists went, he was very convincing.) "They are crow bones, I'll have you know. And I have to use those marbles - someone stole my runes."  
  
Scott rolled his eyes and slapped his hands to his forehead as he turned around, facing the blue beaded curtain that substituted for a door. "I am the stupidest thing on the planet … "  
  
"Possibly," Forajo agreed sourly. "But your friend is on the move."  
  
"Oh really?" He glanced back at him, wondering if his beam would work on him, or if he had a bulletproof/energy proof vest under the robe. Forajo had already made it clear he knew he wasn't a "normal". ( "Oh yeah, normal people wear welding goggles," he snorted, tucking the end of his white hair into his shirt.) "And why am I supposed to believe a word you say?"  
  
Forajo pointed down at the circle. Scott looked, and saw several of the small, white plastic marbles were going around the base of the chafing dish, like water before it went down the plughole. "Parlor trick. I've seen Penn and Teller do something like that." A complete lie, but he hardly could believe such an obvious fraud as Forajo could do anything.  
  
Forajo gave him a look so evil he felt slapped. "If you disbelieve I will give you back your money and you can get the fuck out of my store. Are you going to listen to me or not?"  
  
Although Scott bet he was bluffing about the money … he almost believed he was serious. Wow. He was either snowing him big time, or he was so goddamn desperate he'd believe almost anything. "Fine," he sighed, giving in (for now). "He's on the move to where?"  
  
The demon "Hmm"-ed again, and then realizing that probably was a mistake, admitted, "I'm not sure at the moment."  
  
Scott tried to will himself not to get angry. It was hard, though, because he could already feel the vein in his left temple throbbing away like a jungle drum. "Why the hell not?"  
  
"He's moving! He's not settled! Jesus." Forajo then walked off to a mini-fridge tucked in the near corner, grumbling to himself, "Goddamn mutant goyim thinks he knows better than me. Meshuggenah. I left Belgium for this?" He pulled out a small bottle of Evian spring water (was that fridge really full of Hershey bars and Starbucks iced coffee?) and came back, giving up on the old man shuffle he had tried on him earlier. He took the cap off, and poured half the contents of the bottle into the chafing dish, making the ashes swirl into a soupy mess.  
  
"What is this?"  
  
Forajo took a pull off the water bottle before setting it on top of a nearby crate. "I'm scrying for a location. What does it look like I'm doing?"  
  
Scott decided that was a rhetorical question. "So what does it say?"  
  
Forajo's white eyes bugged out in disbelief. "It's not a fucking television set! I can't just turn it on and bammo! Give it a minute, will you?"  
  
He huffed a sigh through his nose and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the nearest boxes. He saw, stenciled on their sides, "Gross: Crystals" and "Dormant Lavatian Snake Egg Clusters - Do Not Shake or Consecrate". That last one must have been a joke.  
  
It seemed like a full moment passed as Forajo stared into the muddy water - and that was all it was, just a black, sooty mess; Scott didn't see a damn thing, not even Forajo's reflection. He found himself staring at the little white marbles as they circled round, and wondered if maybe he had a demonic power that allowed him to do that; a low level telekinesis, perhaps. Jean, even before her power surge, would have found that a piece of cake.   
  
"California," Forajo finally said, straightening up. "He's in California."  
  
"Where in California?"  
  
Forajo shrugged broadly with his hands. "The upper half. He's on the move-I won't be able to give you an exact location until he pulls over."  
  
Scott couldn't believe he was even buying this. "So we're just supposed to wait until he does?"  
  
"Hell no - get your punk ass out of my store," the demon said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Got a cell phone?"  
  
"In a manner of speaking."  
  
"Well, leave me the number, and I'll call you as soon as he settles."  
  
Scott scoffed. "Uh huh."  
  
Forajo's look was so stern, he almost looked like Xavier under that mess of excess hair and skin. "A deal is a deal, Human. My bond is good, unlike some of yours. And I'd have to be completely fucked in the head to risk pissin' off Bob, wouldn't I?"  
  
He really didn't know, and he suspected that Forajo knew that was a lie. But what did he have to lose here? If the guy was a liar, he would find him; he knew his name, he knew where he worked. It wouldn't be all that difficult to find out where he lived.  
  
And there was some luck in his favor. Xavier (if things were still on schedule) was taking some of the older kids to the local observatory tonight for a little professional stargazing. They'd probably have left by now, as Xavier wanted to get there just before sunset, to show them the grounds. Storm would be in charge of the other kids, and he figured he could sneak past her and get to the jet. Oh sure, she'd be pissed off, but if he claimed it was an emergency (he'd mention Logan's name if he had to), she'd probably let him go. Of course, when Xavier returned, he'd be mighty pissed - and if he did invoke Logan's name, where Storm would give him the benefit of the doubt, Xavier probably wouldn't - he'd know he was up to no good. But hopefully he'd be so far away at that point there'd be no catching up to him.  
  
"No, I guess you wouldn't," Scott finally replied, turning to leave. He left a card for the school with his personal contact number on it on the crate, making sure Forajo saw it. "Call me as soon as he stops."  
  
"I said I would, didn't I?"  
  
Scott paused before the beaded curtain, and turned back, saying sheepishly. "And thanks."  
  
Forajo just made a shooing gesture with his hand. "Get your bony tuccus out of my store, and never darken my doorway again."  
  
That was gratitude for you.  
  
***  
  
Kyoto, Japan - Fifteen years ago  
  
When Xi woke up, it was just as disorienting as coming to after an accident. And in a manner of speaking, she was.  
  
She'd hardly been conscious when the memories started flooding back to her, and she thought she might be sick again. But it had been about a week now, and she was finished throwing up. Or at least she hoped she was.  
  
It was a complicated mission that went horribly wrong. There had been a base built in secret on an island off the coast of Russia, a "mutant experimentation" lab, that they were supposed to infiltrate and destroy - her, Logan, and this strangely fast guy code named "Lightning" (which she thought would have fit an electricity slinger better, but she didn't make these things up).   
  
But they'd been double crossed, as they were apparently expected by the personnel, although that itself didn't matter - they were a team built to take out heavy resistance. It was inside the base there was trouble.  
  
The problem was the automated defense systems: the codes had been changed, and the system was different than the intell had indicated. When the place started armoring up and cutting them off from one another, they knew they were in trouble.  
  
Wolverine - Logan - was in charge, and gave her the order to punch her way out (the forcefield would "repel" the walls, making her seem stronger than she actually was), get Lightning if she could, and get away to a safe distance. He intended to cut into the control center and attempt to abort the self-destruct sequence. Now she could hear announcements in a loud, guttural language that she assumed was Russian, but she couldn't understand them. Logan spoke the language, though, and knew everyone was being ordered out before the whole place went up like a Roman candle.  
  
She didn't want to leave without him, but she trusted that he knew what he was doing - he was Wolverine, after all - and sometimes (frankly) he scared her.  
  
It was funny too. He was closer to the Logan she felt she always knew, and the sex was intense, if perhaps a little too rough sometimes; he really got wild. But if he cared for her at all - if he cared for anyone at all, himself included - she never saw any sign of it. He had all the emotion of a cyborg, and she was starting to miss the awkward but sweet Logan, the one who bought her the bracelet, the one who promised to take care of her. She sometimes wondered if he was dead.  
  
But lately, she'd seen signs that the personality implant - or lack of personality implant, however that went - was breaking down. For one thing, he'd stopped sleeping with her. It seemed he was perennially "not in the mood", which she found very hard to believe from her limited past experience with him, and he was even more taciturn (which she thought was an impossibility), not wanting to talk about anything or spend any time with her off mission. He still didn't remember who exactly she had been to him before, but she was starting to pick up the guilt and self-loathing vibe - he was starting to think she was too young for him.  
  
It gave her some hope, even as she was feeling a sense of loss. Maybe she would lose the Wolverine she knew, but maybe the Logan she knew before would come back.   
  
Lightning was stuck in a corridor in the far end of the complex, so she had to punch her way through about a dozen bulkheads. The power died when she punched through metal wall number four, and she knew Logan must have hit the internal power supply, but red strip lights still cast a sanguineous glow; he hit the mains, but there was a back up somewhere still in effect, which meant the countdown was still on.  
  
She was through five and on her way to the sixth and last one (she could hear him shouting through the wall, "Would you hurry up and get me the fuck outta here?!"), when the entire world seemed to end.  
  
Wasn't sound supposed to be faster than light, or did she have them backwards? All she knew was she saw the light first, a blinding white that seemed to overload and shut down her optic nerves, and then there was a sensation of force, of being pushed by a giant hand. She couldn't remember ever hearing a noise at all.  
  
She came to several meters from the smoldering wreckage of the base, surprised to find her field was still holding, even though she lost consciousness. Those "improvements" that Control said would increase her "mastery" of her powers had obviously worked;, and at the time, she'd been afraid they were going to telepathically manipulate her, like they had Logan.  
  
The base was mostly metal, concrete, and other materials that didn't exactly burn like wood; mostly it was simply smoldering, sending up what must have been semi-toxic clouds of black smoke into the still night air. She kept her field up and struggled to her feet, walking cautiously back to the disaster area where the lab used t o be. The reddish light cast from the meager flames made shadows jitter and sway on the ground, and until her eyes adjusted, she held out hope that it was Human movement. It wasn't.  
  
She called Logan's name twice before remembering he only responded to Wolverine, but it didn't matter; the only sounds she heard were the sizzle of molten metal hitting flames, and concrete cracking from the heat, sounding for all the world like breaking ice. Only once she started to wade into the smoldering debris did she remember to find her comm unit - protected by her field, it too survived intact - and put a call into their allied base in Kyoto, requesting an emergency evacuation team.   
  
The first thing she found was a jagged white bone sticking up from what looked like a hunk of burned meat; her best guess was it was part of Lightning's arm, or perhaps leg, maybe even back. Anatomy wasn't her forte, and he'd been blown into small chunks, many of which were simply bone, as most of the flesh was stripped in the initial blast. He must have been right beside one of the main detonators. The good news was he probably didn't suffer.  
  
Although she felt nauseous, she didn't get sick. She was too afraid of what she might find of Logan. It never really crossed her mind he was dead - he couldn't die. Nothing in her would accept the notion that he could ever die, even if he was at ground zero of a devastating, bunker leveling explosion. He didn't seem to be anywhere, so she started shifting larger hunks of debris around her as best she could. She didn't feel the heat through the field or smell the smoke, but she was no stronger than any woman her general size; the field only let her repel things, use its might against objects in its path; it didn't let her pick up objects she couldn't normally handle.  
  
She heard the staccato whup-whup-whup of approaching helicopter rotors - faint but growing louder every second - when she found Logan.   
  
At first, she was not even sure what she was looking at. Her first thought was dead soldier, as it was a body that had been literally denuded by the blast: the skin and hair was burned away, revealing glistening red knots of muscles and tendons in a grotesque anatomy display, lips curled back to reveal teeth as white as bone, a rictus grin of death. It was the hand that gave away his identity.  
  
His left hand to be exact, splayed out beside him, partially propped up on a slagged I-beam. It was just a mass of muscle, no skin left to see, but as it turned out, flesh had been blown clean off the top half of the index finger. So there, in the hellish glow of the low flames, she saw a gleam that shouldn't have been there; a glint of light off a bone coated in adamantium. She stared at it for a full minute before she realized exactly what she was seeing.  
  
The bile rose up her throat so fast she barely had time to drop the top half of her field before bending over and vomiting violently onto the smoldering debris beside her. But dropping the field allowed her to smell not only the dizzying, toxic smoke, but the thick stench of cooked meat and blood in the air, and her stomach continued to spasm like she was being punched from the inside out. She was dry heaving by the time the recovery team reached her and the charred corpse that was all that was left of Logan.  
  
She started dry heaving again when one of the team shouted, "He's still alive. Holy fuck, what do we do? His skin's coming off on my gloves!"  
  
No one should be alive after that. He was burned over ninety percent of his body, and god knew what kind of internal damage the force of the blast up close caused. It blew Lightning - who was at least theoretically farther away - into constituent bone fragments. The pain … oh good lord, Logan … the poor man. It was then she understood what he meant back in Le Havre, when he said he should have "left" a long time ago; he meant something just like this. What sin did he commit that was so egregious that he had to keep suffering, that he had to be maimed beyond all human endurance … and still come back for more?  
  
She must have passed out, or the drug her rescuer gave her knocked out. Either way, it was a blessing.  
  
When she came to in the Kyoto "safe" area, she immediately asked about Logan, if he was all right, knowing full well no one could ever be all right after being as brutalized as that. She was told he was "recovering", a bland, unsatisfying answer that she would hear several times from different people. It was two days before she worked up the courage to ask to see him. It was another day before Control granted her permission.  
  
He went with her, of course, her cold and unconcerned escort, who led her into what seemed to be a sub-basement of the hospital that she didn't know existed. It was a place of Stygian darkness, where a glow seemed to emanate from the middle of the room, a sickly green that reminded her of the floor tiles upstairs. Technicians in white coats glided like ghosts from one bank of monitors to another, as she finally saw that the green light was coming from what looked like a seven foot long tank of water … a tank that had a body suspended in it.  
  
No, not just any body - Logan.  
  
Most of his skin had grown back, and he had a dark fuzz on his scalp that was most likely hair, while an oxygen mask obscured most of his face. He was naked and unconscious, resting on the bottom of the vat like a person who had accidentally drowned in their own sensory deprivation tank. He looked like a corpse; only the rhythmic bleeps from the monitors told her that he was, on some level, still alive.  
  
Control explained that they didn't expect him to be conscious for days yet, and then after that he wouldn't be "field functional" for perhaps a week. (He was already thinking about putting him back in the field, after this?!) He also dismissed the strangely thick, chemical smelling green water as an "enzyme bath" that helped speed up Wolverine's natural healing process. For some reason, she didn't really like the sound of that. Should they be trying to "speed him up"? He was burned and maimed beyond recognition; for god's sake, couldn't they let him rest?  
  
But she was starting to understand that as long as he was just a thing to them, a tool - Weapon X - they would never let him be. No injury was bad enough.  
  
No rest for the wicked. 


	7. Part 7

11  
  
Chameleon must have drawn the short straw, because when Xi went into the back of the van to sleep, Cressida took her place.  
  
Of all the mutants with him, Logan knew the least about her, second only to Specter, who kept himself "ghosted" most of the time; he had a thing about his privacy, apparently. He didn't like to fight, and he didn't like the real world to see him - he was the oddest of the Organization recruits.  
  
Or maybe not. What little Logan had gotten from Xi about Chameleon was this: she was from Brazil initially, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who owned huge chunks of beach property around Rio, and is possibly one of its biggest slumlords. She didn't talk about her family much, or anything else for that matter. Except when her family found out she was a mutant, they sent her to a highly questionable "clinic" in Sao Paulo that claimed to - for a very exorbitant fee - "cure" or at least "suppress" mutant tendencies. It was in actuality a "blind" for the Organization, which recruited her from there.  
  
As her code name indicated, she was a shapeshifter, but she was not like Mystique. Not only was she not blue and partially scaled, but, according to Xi, not really humanoid. "She's a slug," Spider had once jeered at her. "You need a bucket to hide in, Cressie."  
  
It wasn't that exactly; her molecules were so elastic they were virtually semi-solid. Touching her skin could be like touching gelatin unless she deliberately altered her dermis to feel harder. She had to concentrate to make her bones completely firm, and after a while she found it tiring and painful to keep up the Human form - or any form, for that matter. When she "relaxed", she didn't look sweaty more than she looked like she was melting, like an ice cream cone in hell.   
  
But because she was extremely liquid, she was not limited to humanoid forms like Mystique. She could become a part of the wall, a section of carpet, a piece of furniture, and she had been often, according to Xia. In fact, she enjoyed being on a wall, spreading her molecules, awareness, and consciousness as thin as possible. Logan wondered how she altered herself so she could, hear and see in those states, not to mention pull herself back together, but that was another thing she didn't like to discuss.  
  
For a long time he sat in uncomfortable silence with her in the front of the van as he drove the endless highways of California, where the pastoral North blended into the urban and gentrified middle, and eventually ceded to desertification and the blight that was major corporate development in the Southern end. He could hear Quake and Spike quietly playing poker in the back, and just by the simplest infections in their voice when they said "Open" or "Call" or "Raise you", he knew who had the good hand, and who was destined to lose. He wondered if they'd let him sit in sometime, so he could completely free them of their wallets.  
  
Chameleon's humanoid form of choice seemed to be that of a petite, somewhat plain young woman with short brown hair, and skin so bronze it was almost metallic. Sometimes her shirt looked damp, as if she was sweating through it, but it was just her, losing cohesion by increments.   
  
Logan gradually became aware that some of this scenery looked familiar, and remembered that he had been here before, The first time he'd met Bob, he, Angel, Marcus, and Helga had headed off to Death Valley to discover what the Organization - no, Enigma - had hidden there. It only turned out that Erasmus, Omen, and the Organization were all after it too. But with Bob on their side, none of them ever had a chance. He wondered what had become of Omen, and if Erasmus ever got over believing his hand had been burned off by molten lead.  
  
It couldn't have been in the same spot, or Bob would have mentioned it back at the mini-mart. Besides, the Organization would have known exactly where to look for Enigma's little hideout if it had been in the exact same place as the Org had their super-secret torture chamber. Death Valley was huge - not the Sahara, not the Gobi, but still pretty damn big. If you wanted to get lost there, what was going to stop you?  
  
They were driving along a coast road, the water turning as violently orange as the sky as it reflected the setting sun, and suddenly Cressida said something. "I've always wondered if I could disperse there, you know."  
  
"Huh?" He wasn't really interested, he just wondered what she was talking about.   
  
"The ocean. I always wondered if I could disperse in there and remain conscious, the brain of a living ocean, the sea my body. Probably not, but once the implant completely fails, it would be interesting to find out."  
  
"Implant?" He instantly thought about the one that blew out the side of Static's neck.  
  
"You know, the regulating ones. They're breaking down now that we're not among them anymore. Although I think Jayson's broke down a while ago. Spike and Quake never had one, but they're not one of the opies."  
  
"Opies?" For some reason, he knew this was important.  
  
She grimaced, her thin bronze lips nearly twisting into knots. "It was their stupid nicknames for us overpowered sorts - opies."  
  
"Overpowered? I thought all powers were good."  
  
She shrugged. "Yeah, but some of us … it's fatal, you know? Too much for our physiology to handle. Our powers just grow out of control and kill us. The implants were supposed to help us regulate them, but now they're crapping out, and they ain't gonna help us anymore."  
  
He looked away from the road, and found things clicking into place with a sickening finality. It made sense now, didn't it? It all made sense now. "Is that why you stayed with the Organization, all of you? Because you thought they were helping you?"  
  
She shrugged again, looked out the window at the mango hued water far below them. "Some of us, yeah."  
  
"And now they're letting you die?"  
  
She didn't look at him, but the faintest wry smile graced her lips. "Joining the Organization is a death sentence, Wolverine. But I wouldn't expect you to know that."  
  
"And what is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"It means what it means. You have to actually die and stay dead for it to matter."  
  
He almost shot back that he could die, but then he realized what a stupid thing it was to argue about. He stared out at the gray ribbon of highway before them, and it dawned on him, "You're all in this for revenge, aren't you? You don't actually give a damn about destroying a threat to mutants; you just want to hurt them before you die."  
  
She snorted a laugh, and shook her head as she watched the ocean disappear behind them. "Like you're in it for mutant solidarity, Wolverine. We know what they did to you."  
  
He resented that, and seriously considered slashing her. But if she was basically gelatin, would it even hurt her? Then her words really sunk in. Nearly all of them had implants that were now being shut down, meaning - if the Organization wasn't just feeding them bullshit - they were dying. All of them, save for Quake and Spike.  
  
Xia. Oh shit, that was what he smelled. Anemia his ass; her implant - or her own powers,, both or neither - were killing her.   
  
That explained why Quake was here too, even if he wasn't dying - here to get revenge for his wife. Fair enough. But why was Spike here? Now he was suspicious. As for Spider, he was just a psycho - if there was some killing going down, he very much wanted to be there. But Spike didn't strike him as a psycho; a cipher, yes, but not a maniac. He had to keep a closer eye on him, especially when they neared their target.  
  
Did that explain Xia's strange behavior? Was that all she was hiding?  
  
****  
  
Kyoto, Japan - Fifteen Years Ago  
  
She knew that there were explicit instructions that she not see Logan again, and that's why she stole a technician's magcard, so she could access the private elevator down to the sub-basement.  
  
Once the doors slid open on the darkened chamber, she was already formulating her excuse in her head when a familiar voice said, "Did Logan teach you to disobey orders as well?"  
  
Control emerged from the shadows near the door, and motioned with his hand that she should come forward.  
  
Her stomach clenched in anxiety, but she did as he wanted her to. She'd already ignored his orders once; any more, and she was asking for even bigger trouble. Once inside the room, she noticed that all the technicians had cleared out, and she was alone with Control, comatose Logan, and the bleeping machines, the chemical smell of the cool air making her feel slightly woozy already. Or maybe it was just nerves.  
  
"Do you know why Static was pulled off your mission at the last minute?" Control asked, breaking the fragile silence. He walked around to the far side of Logan's tank, so it was firmly between them. She didn't want to get too close to it. Not only did it seem like an invasion of his privacy, but she didn't want to look at him submerged beneath that green goop, skin as sleek as a newborn baby's, hair just a fringe that was slowly coming back, charting his progress back to the world of the truly living.   
  
"No." She winced at the volume of her own voice; it seemed to echo, like this room was a massive cavern cut into the Earth itself.   
  
"Shrike had a psychotic break. But being a telepath and a natural son-of-a-bitch, he wasn't the one that suffered." Control rested his elbows casually on the edge of Logan's tank, and clasped his hands together just inches over the oxygenated water. If Logan regained consciousness now, he could have grabbed him, pulled him in, and just maybe drown him before anyone responded. She certainly wouldn't have run to Control's aid. "All the members of his team had Shrike's thoughts projected onto them. They all killed each other, pretty gruesomely I might add, although Shrike himself was spared. He then went rogue, probably not out of intent, but because he had all the conscious thought processes of a terrier with a lobotomy. We needed Static to neutralize his telepathic powers until we could physically contain him."  
  
He paused for quite a while before she realized she should say something. "Uh, is he - "  
  
"Contained?" He interrupted, although he kept a deceptively bland smile on his face. But there was a brittleness in his eyes, reflected in the greenish glow from the tank, that made him look like a hungry ghoul. "Yes. And now we have new telepaths working on repairing the damage in Logan's mind, When he's not conscious of them on some level - do you know he likes to fight them? It always surprises me when Wolverine proves his resourcefulness; he's not nearly as dumb as he looks. He bombards them with painful images, you know, and telepaths are very sensitive, especially when he supplies the intense sensory details that he does. And he has lots of nasty memories."  
  
She flinched - certainly he had a new one now - and wondered why he was telling her this, but she knew better than to ask. He would tell her in due time.  
  
"During the attempt to rebuild - and since he's comatose, he's not fighting so much - our telepaths discovered Shrike had some unauthorized fun in Wolverine's mind. We knew he hated him, but we obviously underestimated how much. He … cluttered his mind with several things that were news to us. And you're probably wondering why I'm telling you this, aren't you?"  
  
She nodded, pretty sure he was waiting for some kind of acknowledgement.  
  
His grin grew wider, and infinitely colder. He looked like the personification of death. "Because Shrike made you one of his visual triggers, sweetheart, and you're fucking around with him built up an immunity to the trigger. His personality started falling apart sooner than expected because he was around you too much."  
  
Her stomach turned to ice, and she wanted instantly to deny it, to run for the elevator, but she knew it was pointless. "I - "  
  
"I don't want an excuse," he interrupted coldly. "I don't care who you chose to fuck. What I do care about is you messing up Wolverine's trigger."  
  
"I - I didn't know," she stammered, wanting to argue that Logan shouldn't need a trigger or another personality in the first place. But the look in his eyes made her hold her tongue.  
  
"And that's the only reason you're not dead," he replied matter of factly. She didn't doubt it for a second. "But no more fraternization with him after hours. When we assign you on a mission together, it's business only. Is that clear? Or do you want this to happen to him all the time?"  
  
Now she was confused on top of being dizzy, and her head seemed to hurt on top of her stomach. It was an effort of will not to start shaking. "Wh-what do you mean?"  
  
"If his personality was still in place, if it was still holding, he wouldn't have tried to shut down the self-destruct before it detonated. He would have simply retreated and left whatever mutants were still in there to die. Lightning would probably still be alive if he had - no offense, Atomic, but Wolverine can cut through things much faster than you. And Wolverine wouldn't be in this tank, waiting for a kidney to grow back along with his skin, his left index finger, half of his foot, and most of his nose. Can you imagine the pain he suffered? Can you imagine the pain he's still in?"  
  
She put a hand to her mouth, and tried to will herself not to cry, but tears were already blurring her vision. Was this her fault? It couldn't be her fault … could it?  
  
"You think we're monsters? Logan's implants have always been for his own good," Control told her, his voice now a silky purr of confidence and menace. "We've worked together a long time, him and I, and I can tell you he's a fucking mess, Xia. He had a breakdown himself, you know. He doesn't function well anymore. He's a suicidal, troubled man when left to his own devices - you've seen signs of that yourself, haven't you? He requested his first personality rebuild. I bet you weren't aware of that; I doubt he remembers anymore himself - he has such a poor memory. He knew he wasn't cutting it anymore - so to speak - and he didn't want to risk the lives of his men in the field. He's always thinking of others like that. Which is good in theory, but you can see what happens when he puts it into practice." He pointed down at Logan, floating in serene unconsciousness in his tank of enzyme infused water. "Rather than harming him, we're only trying to protect him from himself. Do you understand that?"  
  
She nodded, crying in earnest now. She couldn't believe it …but she remembered how depressed he was back in Le Havre … god, what was she supposed to think? Was it her fault that he was burned alive and nearly blown to pieces? Did she cause this?  
  
"Remember, Xia, if you see him again off mission, you will be endangering his life. You will be subjecting him to this kind of pain again and again and again. You don't want to do that to him, do you?" He said it in such a patronizing manner it was hard to tell if that was a threat or not. Was it?  
  
She shook her head, and turned to leave, finding it hard to breathe past the lump in her throat. She wondered if she'd ever get a chance to apologize to him, and if he'd ever forgive her - if indeed he ever knew.  
  
12  
  
Scott had forgotten he had his communicator open until it bleeped, but even then, it was almost drowned by the noises of the other equipment in the cockpit. And when he realized what it was, he was reluctant to pick it up - what if it was Xavier?  
  
He told Storm he needed the jet for a "personal assignment", and while she was dubious, she let him go. She might kill him later when she found out what that mission exactly was, but he figured he'd deal with that when he came to it. He switched on the auto-pilot and pulled out the comm, thumbing it on and keeping his thumb on the release; if it was Xavier, he'd cut the connection so fast he'd be lucky to get out a full syllable. "Yeah?"  
  
"You're just Mr. Polite, aren't you?" Forajo creaked.  
  
He rolled his eyes. "Do you have a location for me?"  
  
"What's the magic word?"  
  
Scott was sorely tempted to throw the comm into the nearest bulkhead, but he knew it wouldn't solve anything. Besides, hadn't they already lost enough equipment? "Please," he hissed through gritted teeth.  
  
"There, did that kill you? Death Valley."  
  
"Death Valley?" He repeated incredulously. "Why not just say the Pacific Ocean? Do you know how goddamn big Death Valley is?!"  
  
"Hey, don't climb up my ass! A lot of places there don't have names, ya know, they're just Death Valley! Besides, do you really think there's lots of people wanderin' around out there?"  
  
He didn't want to admit it, but he probably had a point. And with all this equipment, he couldn't pinpoint a bunch of people? Sure he could. As it was, he only had to change his heading a few degrees; he was about twenty minutes away from entering California air space. The sun was starting to set, and he felt like he'd been chasing it across the country. The dying light turned the blanket of clouds beneath him the color of tiger lilies, growing bloody at the edge of the horizon where the California smog started to assert itself. Jean had told him that sometime he ought to just stop and enjoy the view from up here. He hoped she knew he was trying, but when you were dreaming about kicking someone's ass, it ruined the moment. "Thanks," he said, wanting to end this.  
  
"Eh," Forajo said dismissively, and cut the connection before he did.   
  
This is exactly why he hated dealing with demons. Well, amongst other things.  
  
***  
  
The van was built to go off road, which was a good thing, because as soon as they saw the desert, Logan drove straight into it.  
  
It wasn't that there wouldn't be an access road to it; surely there was of some type. But most likely this thing would be out of casual view; you'd have to know where it was to find it. But with a tank full of gas, he was willing to spend all night driving around this fucking desert until he found the goddamn place.  
  
It actually took about an hour and a half.  
  
Spider volunteered to climb on top of the van and have a look see, since his distance vision was so good, and he proved he was a crazy fuck by simply climbing out the passenger window while the van was still moving - at sixty five miles an hour, no less. Now there was a loony motherfucker after his own heart. He bet he was fun to go into battle with.  
  
He'd been riding up there for about twenty minutes when he banged on the roof and hung his head down in front of the windshield. "North," he said, then resumed his position on the roof of the van like a mermaid carved into the prow of the ship.  
  
Jayson, silent all this time, finally shouted from the back, "You're a fucking maniac, Clive!"  
  
Logan was pretty sure he heard Spider laughing over the whistle of the wind.  
  
They hit a dune, and as soon as they crested it, he could see a glimmer of silver. It wasn't true dark yet, just a sort of dark reddish purple hue that reminded him of a fresh bruise just starting to hemorrhage under the skin, And beneath the lowering sky was a complex of interconnected buildings, as flat and rectangular as airplane hangars, all surrounded by a twelve foot high chain link fence, topped with razor wire. There were huge signs warning that it was not only private property but a hazardous waste processing center; there were luminous biohazard symbols every three feet.  
  
"Did you know we were hazardous waste?" Logan asked sarcastically.  
  
Chameleon, back in the shotgun seat, snorted a laugh. "Always."  
  
Spike peeked his head out from the back, and Logan kept the corner of his eye firmly on him. "Think they still have people on guard?"  
  
"Only one way to find out," Logan commented, stepping on the gas.  
  
The van lurched forward, spitting sand in great waves behind them, and he swear he heard Spider actually yell, "Yee haw!" He'd never heard anyone say that before.  
  
A few meters before they met the fence, a guard appeared brandishing some kind of automatic weapon, but even before they hit the gate, Spider launched himself off the roof and just nailed the surprised guard dead on; he didn't even have a chance to get his gun all the way up. Spider just flattened him and grabbed the strap of the gun in his teeth before he launched himself off the guard, an impossibly acrobatic back flip that allowed him to hit the guard flush under the chin with both of his feet. The guard's head snapped back so violently he hit the ground and just laid there, not moving. Logan wondered if he had snapped his neck - a kick that violent, and at such an odd angle, could have done just that.   
  
Spider was doing perfect, rapid back flips across the asphalt covered entryway towards other guards who had appeared and randomly opened fire, but he was moving so fast he was a blur they couldn't quite get a lock on. Then he did something Logan couldn't quite believe: in mid-air, he twisted from vertical to horizontal, and slammed straight into three guards, knocking down a fourth as they all went down like ten pins. Logan suddenly felt like his bad ass status was in question.  
  
The van crashed through the gate violently, warping the frame of both the main gate and the front end of the vehicle (Logan could almost feel the wrenching metal beneath the pedals), and as he brought it to a stop he slued it sideways, so it cut off a small cadre of guards on the way to helping their friends, who were getting the holy shit beaten out of them by the lone, gravity defying Spider.   
  
It was then that the ground started to shake, like a tyrannosaurus rex was on their ass, and he heard Xia shouted, "Tom, are you sure you know what you're doing?"  
  
"It's just to freak them out," he shouted, his voice showing the strain. "It won't get near us."  
  
Logan slammed open the driver's side door and got out, aware that Spike had gotten out of the back and was now following him, all spiked out; dozens upon dozens of black spikes, in various lengths and thickness, stuck through his clothing and his skin, even on his face. He looked like some kind of weird, inhuman porcupine, and it definitely unsettled the guards. So did Chameleon, who got out on the opposite side and came around, this time in the surprising guise of one of those H.R. Giger aliens from the "alien" movies. A small one to be sure, with a more reasonably sized head, but it was still slick black exoskeleton and almost half jutting, slavering jaws. They didn't seem to know who to look at, or who to aim their weapons at first.  
  
He popped his claws, making some of them jump as the earthquake started to subside, and Logan could imagine easily slicing through all of them, cutting them down as cleanly as stalks in a corn field. He could almost taste their blood. "Run," he growled, surprising himself. He had no idea he was going to say that.  
  
And unlike many a soldier he had encountered before, this group obviously had brains, as they instantly turned and ran like their asses were on fire. They must have done the math, and figured out they were outclassed.  
  
"Aww, what did ya do that for, mate?" Spider complained, jumping on top of the van. He was bloody, but that wasn't a surprise. "I was just getting in the zone."  
  
Logan glanced over at the drooling, top heavy Chameleon, and asked, "Could you try and be more Human? I feel like I'm at a Halloween party."  
  
"Yeah," Jayson chimed in from beside the back of the van. He was ghosted out completely, but Logan could still smell him. "Those things gave me nightmares as a kid. Fucking creepy."  
  
When Chameleon reverted, she didn't "flow" from one shape to another; one shape disappeared as rapidly as popping a balloon, with the other - this time her average Latina self - beneath. "Well that's the point, isn't it?" She snapped in Jayson's general direction. "That thing freaks out a lot of people. It's called psychological warfare - look it up sometime."  
  
"In that case, maybe you should become that Texas Chainsaw guy next time," Tom said, emerging from the back. The only sign he had done anything was beads of sweat on his forehead from the exertion of controlling the quake. Xia was right beside him, and the lack of shimmer indicated she didn't have her field up yet. "Or maybe Hannibal Lecter in that mask thingy."  
  
"Or maybe me," Spider said, doing a back flip off the roof and sticking a perfect landing right beside Logan. It was then he figured out how he must have gotten his code name - wolf spiders jumped on their prey, didn't they? They could jump a tremendous distance, and they didn't have a spine either, only an exoskeleton. It didn't look like Clive had an exoskeleton, but after seeing him in action, he could easily believe he didn't have a spine. Spider grinned, showing blood on his slender teeth, and took the strap of the gun off from around his neck. "Any of you gravity challenged people want a boom stick?"  
  
Logan retracted his claws and grabbed the gun away from Spider before Spike - who had also reached for the weapon - could take it. Until he was sure Spike wasn't going to betray them, he wasn't about to let him have a weapon. " Want it Jayson?" Logan asked.  
  
The invisible man snorted derisively. "Fuck no. I'm reconnaissance, not a fighter."  
  
"You pronounced that wrong," Spider jeered at him. "It's not re-con-nay-sense, it's puss-see."  
  
"Go fuck yourself, limey," Jayson replied, but without a lot of heat. He could smell how freaked out Spider made him, even in his ghosted form.  
  
After glancing around at the prospective carriers, he tossed the weapon to Tom, who caught it easily. "Try not to open up the ground unless you have to," he said, by way of explanation. Truth be told, even though he knew Tom would gladly shoot him in the back if given half a chance, he was doing this for his wife - he had a reason to be here, and to see this through. As for Spike … no idea. He was either along for the ride, wanted revenge of his own that was completely separate from their own, or was here to fuck things up, in hopes of getting himself back in good with the Org. Now he was a mutant, and he'd probably never be back in the Org's good graces, but some people didn't have the sense of a toilet brush.  
  
A look of annoyance flashed through his dark eyes, but Spike pretended to be okay with it. He wasn't though. And Logan wasn't sure if it was simply him he wanted to betray, or all of them. But he supposed they'd find out soon enough, wouldn't they?  
  
"Okay, let's see what we got here," he said, glancing at Xia. She looked pale, pained, and slightly sad, and he thought the look was just for him. Why? He remembered her powers were killing her and looked away, back at the interconnected tin warehouses.   
  
He led the ragtag group towards them, wondering who and/or what was in there waiting for them. And exactly how pissed off it was going to be when they crashed its party. 


	8. Part 8

13  
  
The first thing Logan noticed was the smell.  
  
Spider had noticed it too, and commented, "Ooh, somebody likes their poochies damp." It was a sort of wet dog smell, but what he picked up on was a slightly … inhuman smell. Demonic? Possibly, but a kind of demon he had never smelled before.   
  
Once they were past the main metal doors, the warehouse revealed itself to be a shell, or at least the front part of it. Because the inner doors were vacuum sealed bullet proof glass airlocks. Logan simply shattered them with his claws (they must have been working on that adamantium proof stuff still), and they walked through them, into a stainless steel corridor. The wet dog smell continued here, but so did another one, a scent of ozone, that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. He could also hear, at the very threshold of his hearing, a high pitched noise. "We got infrared sensors ahead," he warned them, stopping before he entered the next corridor. It was a bland looking hall, just seamless metal walls, and that itself made it suspicious.   
  
Chameleon appeared beside him, holding a small aerosol can. She sprayed a fine mist that made the slender crimson beams appear. She lengthened her arm to rather extreme lengths so she could reach up towards the ceiling, showing dozens of crimson beams crisscrossing the entire hall ended only three inches from the ceiling. At their lowest point, they were a mere inch away from the floor. "Didn't take any chances, did they?" Logan mused.   
  
"Where did you get that canister from?" Tom asked, just as it disappeared into Cressida's hand. "Oh, eww, it was you, wasn't it?"  
  
"Hey, use it if you got it," she replied dismissively.  
  
"Think you can make it down there and shut it off, Spider?" Logan asked, glancing behind him.  
  
"Piece of pork pie," Spider said, climbing up the side wall and moving up to the ceiling. He pressed himself as flat as possible, and started scuttling down the ceiling towards the end of the hall.  
  
"I'd better go too," Chameleon said, and suddenly collapsed into a huge puddle of water, which then transformed into a very long snake, which slinked across the floor, beneath the beams.  
  
"These are the creepiest people to do anything with," Tom said, possibly to Xi.  
  
Logan shrugged. "At least they get the job done."  
  
"And that's the most important thing," Spike agreed.  
  
It was all Logan could do not to turn around and smack him. If he wanted comments from the peanut gallery, he would have asked for them.  
  
They disappeared from sight around the bend of the hall, and it was about thirty seconds before the hum of electricity died, along with the scent of ozone. The prickly feeling on his skin died away too. He jerked his head forward, and proceeded down the hall, not setting off any alarms or death lasers, or whatever the fuck these things were attached to. As he rounded the bend, he found Chameleon waiting for them, but in a brand new guise. Tom chuckled when he saw she was now a broad shouldered goon in a blue jumpsuit, holding a machete and wearing a hockey mask. "You should really go outside like that," Tom said. "I bet Jayson will scream."  
  
"Are we through having our little laugh?" Logan wondered impatiently. "Where's Spider?"  
  
She gestured with her machete, which subtly grew out from the palm of her hand. "He decided to crawl ahead, see if there were any more guards lying in wait." She'd changed her voice to male as well, and made it sound muffled, like she was wearing a mask. Were all metamorphs this way? Did they really like playing dress up every day of their goddamn lives?   
  
"There ain't," Logan grumbled, shouldering past her and continuing down the hall. Or at least he didn't smell any Humans currently around. Just that weird semi-demonic dog smell, and a new one creeping in, one heavy with chemicals. Some of them were almost familiar … but not quite.   
  
It was like a maze of featureless steel corridors, some twisting back on themselves, and it got darker as they continued, probably because the alarm system was tied into the main power, and killing one killed them both. It started to get more humid the further they went in, which made sense if the air conditioner was shut off as well … but he hadn't heard an air conditioner, hadn't smelled its slightly freon tinged forced air. And the more humid it became, the more it stank of chemicals and wet demon dog. Which was bad enough on its own.  
  
But it was kind of familiar.  
  
He finally turned around to look, and asked Xia, "Have we ever been here before?"  
  
She was so pale, her startled face was almost luminous in the shadows closing in all around them. "No. I mean. I've never been. I don't know about you."  
  
"Never mentioned Death Valley?"  
  
She thought about (all the while, Tom was giving him an evil frown, gripping his gun ever tighter), then shook her head. "Not to me, no."  
  
"Hmm." He turned around, and looked at the darkness ahead. He could just make out a very large door, like one you'd find on an airplane hangar, and it made him deeply nervous, although he couldn't say why.  
  
"Experiencing some déjà vu, Wolverine?" Spike asked. He tried to make it sound innocent, but Logan knew there was some mockery in it. He knew then he had asked the wrong person.  
  
He was going to nail Spike to the goddamn wall when there was a clank, like a huge metal bolt being thrown, and one of the huge doors started to slide open. Logan popped his claws, felt Xia's field go up behind him as Tom aimed his weapon, and Chameleon, still looking like a horror movie slasher, came up beside him and held her machete at the ready.   
  
But it was Spider who squeezed out the small gap, and said to them, "You won't believe what's in here."  
  
The odor from inside the room hit Logan hard. It was chemical (they were familiar, somehow, some way…) and demonic, Human and … familiar. Familiar enough that his stomach twisted, and he could taste sour adrenaline in the back of his throat. Whatever was in there, it terrified him and made him angry enough to wish he'd bought along some Semtex, so he could reduce this heap to rubble.  
  
He wanted to run in the opposite direction, but he forced himself forward, and shoved open the door with a brute force even Spider couldn't hope to muster.   
  
It was a huge space that could have been a factory floor at one time, but now held nothing but … coffins. No, not quite. Tanks. Just like the Weapon X tanks, clear material that was not quite glass and not quite metal, but something in between. Some were standing on end, while others were in the traditional horizontal manner, and there were maybe three dozen of them lining the huge side walls, and the one at the very back of the room. Maybe half of them emanated a low, green glow, and seemed to be occupied … but not all the occupants were even remotely humanoid.  
  
Xia gasped in horror, and the sound seemed to echo in the cavernous space as they all filed in. The only light came from the functional units, a sickly glow like flames through gangrenous flesh that barely punctured the gloom. To say it was nightmarish was like saying the Antarctic could get chilly at times. And this was exactly the place from his nightmares, as dark and rank with the scent of fear and pain and blood … only it wasn't all Human blood.  
  
And there was that bizarrely familiar smell again. Another scent was layered over it, demonic enough to throw him off. What was that smell?  
  
"What the fuck is this place?" Tom asked, nervously aiming his gun at all the creeping shadows.  
  
"Armageddon," Spike said, and he didn't sound too shocked.  
  
Logan followed the hauntingly familiar scent to a horizontal tank close to the center of the room. The thing in the thick green goop looked more or less Humanoid. "This is an outgrowth of Arsenal, isn't it?" He asked, suddenly sure he had the missing piece of the puzzle.  
  
"Arsenal?" Spider asked, putting undo emphasis on the first syllable.  
  
"A failed program where the Organization tried to recruit demons and mutants into working together," Spike dutifully told them. "It was cancelled because the demons were often uncontrollable, and some of the mutants were hardly any better." Logan wondered if that was a vague reference to party pooper Magneto.  
  
"What the fuck?" Chameleon said, still in her male voice. Her machete flashed in the darkness. "Demons? Are you serious?"  
  
"Very much so," Logan told her, not looking back. These tanks had lids on them, see through, but covered with an internal fog, so he couldn't quite see through it. He wondered if this was some kind of suspended animation. "Humans attack us, and they don't know there's other creatures out there fightin' for the Earth. Some are better than people, and some are just as bad."  
  
"And you know that how?" Tom challenged.  
  
"I've met 'em, I've fought 'em. And I got a god on my tail who thinks he's my friend."  
  
"Would you repeat that last statement?" Chameleon said incredulously.  
  
"Oh my god," Spike gasped. "That's it, isn't it? All this time, we thought he was just a powerful mutant."  
  
"No, MY god," Logan drawled. "And you're mine, Spike."  
  
"You hitting him on him now, mate?" Spider jeered. "I thought you godhead types didn't go for behind the woodshed hanky panky."  
  
"He's just revealed himself to be a member of the Organization upper echelon," he explained, never taking his eyes off the livid green glow of the tank. It was unreal somehow, like walking freely in his own nightmare. Maybe he wasn't really awake. "He wasn't surprised by any of this, and he knows about Bob, a reality warper who no one has ever remembered - except the late, not so great Reaper, whom Bob made mundane. Sorry to break it to you, Spike, but Bob let him remember for a reason. Tag, you're it." Bob did everything for a reason; sometimes it wasn't clear at the time, but later it always made a bizarre sort of sense. And here, it had revealed a traitor. Bob didn't just think several moves ahead - he controlled the entire fucking board.  
  
"Who the fuck is Bob?" Chameleon asked, obviously appealing to the others for information.  
  
Much to Logan's shock, he heard the gun being primed, and Tom said, "Don't move, Spike."  
  
"What?" Spike sounded indignant. "You can't believe him. He used to fuck your wife."  
  
Spider laughed. "Wolverine fucked a lot of wives; the ladies loved the furry guy."  
  
"Reaper was stabbed, for Christ's sake - he probably did it," Spike continued, perhaps rethinking the whole infidelity thing since Tom was already pissed off and sighting down the barrel of a gun at him. Bullets would annoy him but do little else; Spike would get splattered all over the hangar.  
  
"Stabbed?" Logan repeated, finally looking at him over his shoulder. "Bob didn't kill him, and since when do I stab anybody?" He raised a set of sprung claws until they glinted in the green light. "I fucking disembowel. And I would have cut up that Reaper fuck like a pizza, but Bob didn't let me. So who did kill him, Spike?" He emphasized his code name, only then realizing Spike could stab people pretty damn good at close range.  
  
But Spike glared back at him fearlessly, his dark eyes full of loathing. Did he hate him figuring it out, or just hate him on principal? "You really think anyone believes you didn't kill him?"  
  
"He didn't," Xia suddenly interjected. She was now shimmering faintly. "Wolverine hated Reaper - he'd have left nothing but chunks. Besides, wasn't he found dead in his office? How would he have gotten within a yard of the building without anyone knowing about it?"  
  
Spider was now sticking to the side of a tank standing on its end, but dark as if not in use. "I think someone advanced up the ladder the easy way. The kill your boss way."  
  
Spike seemed to share the glare with all of them. "What, do you think I'm out to screw you 'cause I worked for Reaper? News flash, assholes - we all worked for Reaper. And I heard rumors of Armageddon existing, but I had no idea where or what it is; Reaper was in that loop, not me. And it's fine if you want to think this is some bad spy melodrama and I'm a mole, but no mutant is welcome in the Organization anymore. May I also point out that Wolverine works for the very group that ruined everything, and has been talking to this mysterious Bob person behind our backs, and telling him everything we're doing?"  
  
Logan shook his head and looked back down at the tank. "Like I have to tell Bob anything." He attempted to clear the condensation off the lid of the tank, but most of it was inside, and it did no good. He just saw hairy legs, a man's, that looked fairly human, but he knew that with a lot of demons, they could hide what they were, or it was all inside. Same with mutants too.  
  
"And what does that mean?" Spike snapped. "If he's a god, why won't he help you?"  
  
"All he's done is help me; I'd rather help myself." There was a glowing green pin light at the end of the tank, on a small metal inset that probably passed for a readout on this tub. He couldn't make heads nor tails of any of it, but the green light was now flickering.  
  
"God helps those who help themselves," Spider said, chuckling darkly.  
  
Logan really wanted to find out if he would squish like his namesake.  
  
"Demons and gods both exist?" Chameleon asked, her voice deepening as she grew more frustrated. "Do little green men exist too? Can we look forward to a visit from aliens now?"  
  
"According to Bob, most aliens are actually just people from other dimensions, and they want nothing' to do with us as a matter of principal."   
  
"You really expect me to believe there's a god, and his name is Bob?" Chameleon repeated, apparently unable to get over this.  
  
"Maybe he's incognito," Spider offered, still chuckling.  
  
Logan tried to figured out why the light was blinking when he noticed that some of the condensation within the tank had started to clear up. Okay, that wasn't good. "I think we set off a silent alarm," he said, the instant the huge metal doors sealed and locked with a heavy finality.  
  
"Oh shit," Spider said, as all the functional tanks seemed to explode open, spilling their human and demonic contents onto the cement floor. Except for this tank, of course. Logan stood over it, claws out, and wondered if it was malfunctioning. Should he just shatter it? Or did it matter?  
  
"Jayson," Tom shouted into his comm as he opened fire on something that looked extremely squid-like - if squids were six feet tall and had several extra sets of tentacles.   
  
It was then that the tank he was standing by exploded open, sending metallic edge glass fragments flying into his face - along with blood warm, chemical laden fluid, and as he reeled back, he thought he'd caught a glimpse of silver.  
  
"Holy fuck," Chameleon exclaimed.  
  
Logan now knew why the scent was so familiar. He found, standing in the ruins of the tank, a naked man with three nine inch blades coming out of each of his hands; a man who was himself in almost every physical respect imaginable.  
  
The word "clone" barely had time to zip through his mind when its - his - eyes suddenly glowed an ichor green, and it let loose a gravelly, inhuman growl. Not a clone - a hybrid.  
  
But of him and what?  
  
Before he could recover from the shock, it dove into him, punching its slick claws through his midsection, and Logan's scream of pain got lost in the inchoate noise of battle.  
  
14  
  
There was much more in Death Valley than Scott ever expected.  
  
Still, after scanning with the available equipment, he was able to figure out what it was he wanted. Not people wandering around in a daze, but a cluster of vaguely camouflaged buildings that gave off a strange metallic reading: adamantium, of course. Not much, but enough to register. They must have reinforced it for some reason, and whatever that reason was, Scott knew it couldn't be good.  
  
The heat still radiating from the desert floor was fucking up the infrared sensors (or the building was radiating a field that did it - he didn't know how exactly, but that didn't mean it wasn't possible), but a close visual seemed to indicate that everyone had gone inside. The dead and dying (?) guards splayed out across the tarmac before a smashed gate were equally indicative of this. Scott shook his head in disgust, marveling at what an animal Logan still was. The Professor was so very wrong - redemption? For that thing? Unlikely. But then again, he still refused to give up on Magneto, didn't he? He had faith in the most hopeless people.  
  
Scott decided to put the jet down behind a dune just West of the base, as there was no need to advertise his arrival so dramatically. He wanted to surprise Logan and his "pals" as much as Humanly possible. He'd brought weapons too; nothing lethal, just enough to put them down for a while. He wasn't positive his optic beam could take them all down, and he knew it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when dealing with asshole psychopaths of this particular magnitude.  
  
Not that it mattered, but he didn't wear his uniform, just his casual clothes, although he wore a high-impact vest underneath his shirt. It wouldn't protect him from Logan's claws (if he was stupid enough to let him get close enough to use them), but he knew from past experience that Logan's punches and kicks - when he went all out - were a bit more brutal than average. All that adamantium in him gave him an edge; it was like getting smacked around by a guy in armor.  
  
He regretted the vest the instance he was outside the plane, though; it was so hot he started sweating instantly, and the cool night breeze hardly cut it. Well, they did call it Death Valley for a reason.  
  
He walked in through the broken gate, wondering if there were any guards still alive and if he should call 911 for them (but then again, the nearest road was about five miles away at least - did they come out here? And how would he give directions: "Hang a right at the coyote carcass beside the saguaro shaped like someone giving the peace sign … ") when he heard a static-y radio spit out a frantic "Jayson!" before dying in what sounded like a burst of gunfire.  
  
It didn't sound like it came from the guards; it sounded like it came from the direction of the van that presumably Logan and his friends hijacked. Still, it could have been a guard's radio - it could have fallen out during the melee and ended up over there.  
  
As Scott wandered over to see if he could find it, he was sure he heard the crunch of gravel, like someone walking away, but as he frantically looked around, he saw no one.   
  
One hand on his visor and the other loosely on the paralyzer on his hip, he said, "Hello? Who's here?" He was braced for attack from any direction, but there was no answer - or any noise - at all.  
  
It was then that an earthquake hit and made him stumble, fighting for balance as the earth seemed to turn gelatinous under his feet. Okay, he assumed he was either in California on the wrong day, or it was simply the guy that Brendan had called "earthquake boy", one of the mutants supposedly on the Organization team. Although this was inconvenient, Scott figured he could take him out with a blast if he got him in range (and before any buildings fell on him).   
  
The warehouse seemed to waver, like a tree limb in a breeze, but it held firm, and no big bits of it fell off or down; Scott assumed that's what the adamantium was for. Being in California, this place was probably built to take a ten pointer on the Richter scale.  
  
But the asphalt wasn't. It was cracking beneath his feet, spider webbing like fractured glass, and he had to stumble inside the broken doorway of the warehouse to avoid getting thrown down into a newly formed sinkhole. He wondered if the invisible (?) person was still around, but he didn't know what to do if they were, or how to find them.  
  
As it was, the quake died then - just in time for him to hear the shouts and the gunshots. Very muffled, but deep within the building. Great; Logan and his friends had started the party without him.  
  
Scott forged ahead grimly, wondering if there were any good guys he could join up with here, or if they were all bad, with some just simply being worse than the others. What was that saying? The devil and the deep blue sea. Well, maybe that should be amended to Bob or Logan.  
  
No, that was giving Logan too much credit - he was still mortal after all. Something could kill him. Bob ... well, who the hell knew? Nothing had worked yet.  
  
The cacophony seemed to end behind two huge hangar doors, warped in its frame but still sealed shut. There was no visible panel anywhere, so he didn't see how he could operate it, and it was too heavy to open manually. That left him one option, didn't it?  
  
He backed up down the hall, not wanting to be caught in any backwash, and did pause for a moment, as he considered the possibility it would rob him of the element of surprise.  
  
Oh, fuck it - if this didn't surprise them, nothing would.  
  
And with that thought, Scott ripped off his visor, and opened his eyes.  
  
***  
  
Tom started an earthquake as the hybrid Wolverine ripped a claw out of Logan's abdomen and started slashing his face, ripping back and forth as if pimp slapping him. Of course, most pimp slappings didn't partially sever your nose or rip the side of your face open.  
  
Logan punched his own claw through the thing's chest, right where the heart should be (should-if it was part demon, there was no telling where the heart was), and brought his other claw up to block the next slash. But god it hurt; it hurt so fucking much.  
  
It was hard to breathe too; blood was flooding his nasal passages and his mouth, and he was trying not to choke on it. He hated the taste of his own blood.  
  
The thing's florescent green eyes widened, presumably in pain, as he punctured the heart (or he at least hoped he did), and since that had stilled his assault for a moment, Logan grabbed his extended arm and tossed him off. He'd forgotten it still had a claw in him until it tore away with its owner.  
  
His intention was to get up and give that sucker some of his own back, but when he rolled over, pure agony ripped through his gut, and he curled up in a fetal ball, arms around his torn open stomach, surprised to feel how much blood was still flowing from the wound. Had that thing done that much damage in a short amount of time? (He knows my weaknesses because he's me.) Or was there some kind of demonic poison on the claws? Oh fuck, hadn't he been down that road before?  
  
"It's not working," Chameleon shouted, almost in time with the wet thwacks of her machete as she sliced another Squidward apart. "Tom, the room is holding."  
  
"Of course it is," Spike shouted. All spiked out again, he was punching and ramming them into any demon/mutant thing stupid enough to get close to him. He was covered in blood but doing all right for himself. "We're in California; this place is so earthquake proof it could probably be at the bottom of the San Andreas Fault and never even suffer a crack."  
  
Great - another flaw in the master plan.  
  
As the earthquake died away (Tom officially giving up for now), Logan forced himself to sit up, ignoring the monstrous, burning pain in his belly, only to see his demonic doppelganger had recovered first. It was back on its feet, still snarling, eyes lambent in the gloom. Blood ran down his claws, and Logan knew it was his. "Who are you?" Logan barked, just to see if this thing had anything approaching a functioning higher brain. The shadows around them were roiling with movement, and he could see more glowing eyes, and more claws - some metal, some not. "Can you speak? Do you have a name? Do you know it?"  
  
The rage sent adrenaline flooding through him, and the pain became a dull background ache. Those sons of bitches; they had taken his DNA, and made these … things. It wasn't enough he had been violated once so they could make him a walking Ginsu - he had also been violated at the cellular level, to make a hybrid demon/mutant army.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw an energy beam spit out from the side of the room, and hit the cement floor with a sizzle. "Christ!" Tom yelled, more surprised than anything.  
  
"I'm punching down the door," Xia said.  
  
The green eyed thing snarled at him as the last of its puncture wounds sealed as he watched, the seam of flesh growing together, and it growled a single gravelly word: "Wolverine." Logan didn't know if it was identifying him, or naming itself.  
  
It charged in, claws flashing, and Logan, realizing it was just a straight ahead charge, ducked under and to the side, barely avoiding its claws and slamming one of his own through its stomach before quickly turning away, ripping out most of its left side at the same time. If it was half demon he had no idea the amount of damage it could sustain; god knew he could take a lot.  
  
Blood splashed on the floor between them, and even in the darkness, Logan knew its color was as wrong as its smell. And while the thing ("Wolverdemon," he thought, and almost laughed at how pathetic it was) stumbled and almost slipped on its own blood, it didn't fall. Was it possible they made this son-of-a-bitch tougher than he was? Well, what would be his purpose if it wasn't?  
  
He had just decided he was going to have to try and decapitate it when the door violently exploded open … all over them. 


	9. Part 9

"What the fuck …?" Spike exclaimed, as he was thrown to the side.  
  
Most of them were able to avoid the flying door fragments, but most of the part demon things got caught in the flying shrapnel. Logan hit the floor (as much as it still fucking hurt), but the Wolverdemon (ha!) wasn't so fast - maybe it was the gut wound, maybe he was just slow without his morning caffeine - but a good chunk of the door sailed over Logan's head and nailed his demon twin straight in the chest. He went flying across the room as Logan looked to see if his suspicions about that red glimmer had been correct.  
  
They were. Scott stomped into the room, hand raised to his visor, and shouted, "Logan! You goddamn - "  
  
Scott stopped as he saw the demonic things rising from the wreckage around him, and seemed baffled by the appearance of so many things that looked roughly like him he seemed confused. "What the hell ..?"  
  
"Don't you fucking move!" Tom shouted, getting him directly in his gun sights.   
  
"He's one of us," Logan snapped. "Don't you recognize him? The Org brainwashed him for a while." Logan got to his feet and looked around for the main Wolverdemon, He saw three others converging on him that were like photocopies of photocopies; they were technically okay, but seemed to be lacking … something. One walked with his back hunched over, and the reason why became apparent when he noticed he seemed to have four claws on each hand, about fourteen inches long, and grotesquely muscled forearms - his arms were so heavy he couldn't stand up straight. The other had bug eyes, or maybe just those X-Files alien eyes, almond shaped and all black; he also had a distended jaw full of too many teeth, and he both growled and drooled as he breathed. The third didn't have proper hands; his arms ended in a single thick, sharp blades that came out of the stumps of his forearms. Logan realized, with a sick feeling in his stomach, that these were the experiments, the rejects, the attempts to improve his basic model. Jesus fucking Christ - he had underestimated the monstrous cruelty of these bastards, and he didn't think that was possible.   
  
"What is going on here?" Scott exclaimed, still sounding bewildered.   
  
The hunchbacked Wolverdemon took a swipe at him with his scythe like claws, but in spite of the reach he had, he moved slow, and Logan ran at him, slicing his throat open with his own smaller (but far more maneuverable) claws; he sliced all the way down to his adamantium coated spinal cord, so his head flopped back, held on by simply that, and he collapsed heavily to the floor, spurting reddish black blood. He probably hadn't killed him yet, but he knew he should, and put the wretched thing out of his misery.   
  
The one with the distended jaw and the ones with the shivs for hands attacked him at once, but Logan buried a claw into the gut of the one with the jaw, even as he bit down on his upper arm, and with his other claw sliced the eyes out of the one with the shivs for hands. He still slipped a blade between Logan's ribs, even as he let out an inhuman scream because his eyes were sliced in half right inside their sockets. It was basic strategy: if your opponent couldn't breathe, see, or stand, they were effectively neutralized as a threat.  
  
Logan was pretty sure Wolvie Knifehands had nicked the lower lobe of one lung, as his breathing felt labored now, but he didn't give it much thought; adrenaline was roaring through his blood now, and his mind had entered that mode where all he could think of was the kill. Everything else was irrelevant.  
  
The thing that shot those destructive beams (a riff on Reaper's physiology?) took aim at Scott, but missed his head by several millimeters. Scott then shot back, but having had more practice with his visor nailed the thing straight between the eyes, and sent it crashing into the far wall with bone shattering force. Maybe these things had been in suspended animation or its equivalent, but they were starting to wake up, and they were getting a little faster and a little smarter.   
  
Logan kicked shiv hands away as he snarled over losing his eyes (if he had his healing factor, it was far from permanent), and ripped his claw up and out of the black eyed one's gut, disemboweling him. He staggered backwards as there was a big splat of various organs falling out of him and hitting the cracked floor, and even then it still took a moment for that Wolverdemon to drop to his knees. He'd probably survive it, and he knew if he allowed himself to think about it, it would be disgusting beyond all measure.  
  
"Oh yes, you're the one they called Cyclops," Spider said, crushing the head of a slimy demon thing. "Well, grab a partner and start dancing, boy."  
  
"Where are the rest of 'em?" Logan shouted, as he saw the blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. "Tell me Rogue is here." The first Wolverdemon had recovered and came rushing at him, but he was ready for it. It was a standard claws first lunge, and while he wasn't used to fighting himself, he was used to fighting in general; he spun aside at the last second, so it would just miss him, and slashed out blindly with his claw, letting the demon's own momentum rip it through his body.  
  
Sparks flew as the tips of his claws met his adamantium skull beneath the skin, and Logan ripped off the entire left side of its face, including its ear, which he identified before it hit the floor. And in spite of it all, he knew it wasn't enough to stop it.  
  
"I came here alone," Scott shouted back, avoiding a flailing tentacle. "I'm here to kick your fucking ass."  
  
"You?" Chameleon snorted. She now had two machetes, and was slashing everything within reach to tiny little pieces. She looked swamped, as did the still gravity defying Spider, the lit up Xia, the spiked up Spike, and the frustrated Tom (who was out of bullets, and now using the gun as a bludgeon). Where were all these fucks coming from? "You're just an energy slinger. I've killed worse than you."  
  
Logan went after the Wolverdemon before it could recover and attack again. As it turned, slashing and snarling, unaware of or unconcerned by the missing half of its face, Logan kicked it in the stomach, doubling it over, and retracted the center claw of his right fist as he drove the other two straight up into its face - and through its eyes. He had no idea if his claws had gone deep enough to hit the brain, but he could only hope, for both his sake and its.   
  
"Who the hell are you?" Scott snapped, shooting down another one of those big squid things.  
  
A tentacle wrapped around Logan's neck and yanked him back violently, so he didn't see the extent of the damage he had done to the first Wolverdemon, that collapsed to the blood splattered floor in a heap. At least that was a good sign.  
  
Logan slashed the tentacle in two pieces, and he dropped to the floor as it released him with a gargling scream. Another tentacled thing had grabbed Scott from behind and flung him into Chameleon, who went down with more of a splash than a thud (maybe the machetes were the only solidified part of her), and a couple of things that moved so fast they were blurs ran out the broken doorway. "Stop them!" Logan shouted, to anyone who was free enough to pursue them. "We can't let them out!" He didn't actually know why, except they were probably mindless things programmed with a single mandate - kill mutants, or maybe, if the programming was imperfect, kill anything that smelled funny, was warm blooded, or even vaguely Human.  
  
"Oh joy, a hunt," Spider said, launching himself off the wall and following them down the hall. At least Spider had the best chance of actually catching up and killing them.  
  
"Tom!" Xia exclaimed, as some clawed thing that looked more demon than the Wolverdemons he had been fighting punched its claws through his shoulder. Xia punched it in the head with her force field and it went flying away, but Tom dropped to his knees in agony, grabbing his arm.   
  
Scott made a noise of disgust and struggled to his feet as Chameleon pooled into a liquid and rose up into her solid slasher form once more. "Watch it, asshole," she snapped at him, as soon as she had a mouth.  
  
But before they could argue about it, they were attacked in tandem by two of those giant land squid looking things; they both seemed to be swallowed by mud brown tentacles that encircled them head to foot like ravenous boa constrictors.   
  
Logan moved to help, only to be grabbed by another tentacled thing himself. It was when he sliced it in half and looked at it that he saw why there seemed to be no end to these things: they were pooling and reforming, just like Chameleon. Holy shit - they quite literally had her liquid morphology. How the hell were they going to kill these things if slicing them up didn't do it? Presumably they'd eventually lose molecular cohesion, like Chameleon herself, but who had time to wait for that to happen?  
  
A badly thrown demon hit him in the back, sending him crashing down to the floor on one knee, and old black eyes - disemboweled or not - chose that moment to sink his teeth into his neck.   
  
Even as he ripped away a chunk of flesh from the side of his throat, Logan plunged a claw through the demon's neck and ripped, briefly catching his claws on its adamantium neck bones. Its blood - rank and smelly and far too salty - spurted all over him before it hit the ground once more, and Logan brought a hand up to the hole in his own neck. Although there was a quite a bit of blood pouring out, it mostly just tore away muscle and flesh; nothing major, nothing that wouldn't grow back in a few minutes.  
  
But as he was starting to stand, he felt something sharp rip into the back tendons of his leg, right below the knee, and sever them. The leg collapsed and so did he, a violent, hot pain sizzling up from the limb. He'd just hit the cement floor when he felt a savage, sharp pain - several small daggers - rammed into his side, puncturing his lung on the other side. Even before more small daggers punched down into the back of his neck and stayed there, effectively pinning him face down to the floor, he knew who his assailant was. "Spike," he snarled, trying to figure out a way to get up or at least fight back. But Spike had plotted his assault well - it was almost impossible to do anything when you were pinned down by the back of your neck, and he'd dropped his spiky knees on his left arm, stapling it to the floor, so he couldn't lash out. In a straight out fight, Spike had to know he had no chance in hell; instead, he planned a sneak attack where he could effectively nail him to the floor, ruling out a face to face confrontation. "You motherfucker."  
  
"Static had been right about you," he said, punctuating every other would with a spiky fist. In his throat, the side of his face. "You are still the impossible man. I knew you'd figure a way to find this. But guess what, old man? You ruined everything." Logan was pretty sure he'd just lost his earlobe on that side; the blood running down the side of his neck and face was itchy. "Do you know how close we were to finally be in place to take over the whole Organization from within? Do you? We could have had the whole thing and you ruined it. I know they blame Xavier, but I know it was you, you selfish bastard. You got your revenge, at the price of damning us all." Spike had finally punctured the carotid artery; he was bleeding out like a stuck pig all over the floor. "Every mutant, every goddamn where, and they're gonna die because of you. You are not getting away with it. I won't let you. Die with the rest of us, old man."  
  
Why the fuck did he keep calling him old man? Logan felt weak and just a little cold, but he knew bleeding out wasn't a sure way to kill him; he also knew the smell of so much Human blood would bring the demons a-running. It was a grave tactical error, and in spite of the pain, he knew he would have laughed if he could. Spike had made the wrong call.  
  
When Logan heard a thud like someone throwing down a side of beef, he wasn't surprised; nor was he surprised to feel Spike's blood splash on him, creeping down the exposed side of his face as Spike's punches ceased, and he seemed to waver on his knees, driving the spikes deeper into his arm. Still, he had the strength to yank his arm out from underneath him, in spite of the pain of skin being torn away, and rolled over onto his back, ready to take on the demon that had just taken Spike out.  
  
Which was why it was such a surprise to see it wasn't a demon. Xia was standing behind Spike, glimmering with her forcefield, her fist through Spike's chest, right where his heart was supposed to be. Spike had died with an almost comical look of wide eyed surprise frozen on his face.  
  
She pulled her arm out of the neat hole her force field had put in his torso, and only then did Spike finally topple over, face first onto the floor. Although he was still pretty weak and in a world of hurt (those spikes did fucking sting; he had to give him that), he looked up at her questioningly, and tried to muster his forces to at least sit up. Xia was crying quietly, a river of tears streaming down her face, but she looked miserable, sick but not sad. He tried to say something and failed, probably because of all the blood in his mouth. By the time he had turned away to spit it out, she was back in the melee, and he was riding out a wave of dizziness from moving too fast.  
  
"What the fuck is your problem?" Chameleon shouted, as she did something that made one of the tentacle things blow up like a potato in the microwave. Its rubbery flesh and liquid organs splattered all over the cavernous hangar. "Do I look like I'm in the mood for this shit? Do I?"  
  
Two large, coherent beams of red light sent the second land squid flying out the doorway, making it just a bit wider. "It's their own fault," Scott said, closing his eyes and dropping into a crouch as he blindly felt around for his visor. "Shouldn't have knocked my glasses off."  
  
Chameleon actually kicked Scott's visor to him, in a strange bit of teamwork on her part. Or maybe she just wanted him to cover up before he brought the warehouse down on their heads.  
  
Logan sat up, aware the demons were closing in on him, but he let them have Spike - who the fuck cared if they gnawed on him like a chicken bone? But something shifted heavily in Logan's blood soaked coat, and he remembered the phone. Oh, right. How had he forgotten about that again?  
  
He pulled it out and flipped it open, belatedly realizing he still couldn't focus very well. There was the little matter of blood loss, and oh yeah, one of Spike's spikes punctured his right eyeball; he could see nothing but red out of it for the moment (but it was already brightening - a good sign). But since this was a phone Bob had given him, it was probably pre-programmed or something. He hit a couple buttons at random, just before another Wolverdemon tried to slice his arm off.  
  
Adamantium met adamantium, causing sparks as claws clashed with metal covered ulna, and while it hurt like fuck, the end result was Logan lost his grip on the phone. With an angry snarl he slashed back, but while he aimed to open up the gut, his questionable vision made him miss - he cut the poor fuckers dick off instead.  
  
It didn't scream more than make a squealing noise of pain, but he stumbled back and away. Logan winced in sympathy, and almost thought about apologizing. Killing was one thing; ripping someone's dick off was another.  
  
The phone hadn't landed near him; in fact, he was pretty sure he heard it hit the floor hard enough to break. Well, there was a good idea in the toilet. Glancing around as his eye healed, he saw Xia had her arms around the injured Tom, protecting the both of them with her forcefield, while Scott and Chameleon seemed to be playing a form of pinball with a Wolverdemon and another Squiddie: Scott used controlled bursts of energy to send them right into Chameleon's machete arm at a force guaranteed to lop something off, or at least knock the wind out of them. There was a clot of demons in the far corner, tearing Spike up like a side of barbecued ribs; it sounded like they were eating him, but he couldn't see that well to say for certain.  
  
It bothered him that Spider wasn't back yet. Those things couldn't have taken out Spider, could they have? Talk about a mixed blessing.  
  
In spite of the burning pain in his arm (neck, face, back, shoulder, ear), he managed to get to his feet, stumbling, slipping slightly in his own blood. He was about to join the fray with a little dicing action of his own, when he noticed a figure standing out in the hallway. His vision had partially come back in his right eye; red shadows had become black ones, with some fuzzy gray light on the side. He thought it was Spider, but the shape was wrong; Spider was lank and gangly, his limbs almost too long for his scrawny body. But the guy in the hall had a good build, above average if not average.  
  
Logan heard a gravelly growl behind him, smelled blood, and knew the original Wolverdemon was done snacking on Spike, and wanted something a little fresher. But before he could turn around, a familiar voice said, "Holy fuck, this was a kerfuffle, wasn't it?"  
  
Bob.  
  
The demon things froze in their tracks, and Chameleon, Xia, and Tom seemed slightly baffled, as they had never seen Bob in action before. To prove it, Chameleon waved her bloody machete threateningly, and demanded, "Who the fuck are you?"  
  
"Bob. My phone broke, didn't it?"  
  
Logan knew that was aimed at him. "Got dropped."  
  
Bob shrugged, and entered the hangar, having a good look at the carnage as Chameleon warily prodded one of the frozen demons with the point of her blade. It didn't react in the slightest. "Happens. No biggie."  
  
"Do you have any idea what's going on here?" Scott asked him, sounding exasperated.  
  
"You're the Bob Wolverine talked about?" Chameleon said, talking over Scott. "He said you're a god. Is that true?"  
  
Bob scoffed humorously. "Heavens no." Logan could hear the smile in his voice. "This is California - the moment you believe your own publicity, you're doomed."  
  
Chameleon scowled at him, picking up that that wasn't exactly an answer. "What the fuck are you on, ese?"  
  
But Bob ignored that, and gave Scott an inexplicable smart ass grin. "And mate, you lie like a Belial. Nice job! There's hope for you yet."  
  
Logan wondered what that was about, but it made Scott grimace and look away, flushing slightly, and Logan figured it must have been something really good. Did the Boy Scout actually step over a line - any line? Maybe he was finally starting to grow a pair.  
  
Bob walked past them, into the main area of the hangar, and his grimace drew down into a scowl as he saw one of the giant squid things. "Oh, you poor thing, what have they done to you?" He said, and Bob must have released him, because it moved, a tentacle wrapping around Bob's waist.  
  
"Hey," Chameleon said, raising her machete.  
  
But Bob must have stilled her, because she froze, and he put his arms around the squid thing, which seemed to lower the top half of its large, bulbous head against Bob's torso. "There there," he said to it, stroking the back of its leathery scalp. "I'll get you home."  
  
"You speak squid?" Scott asked, although he didn't sound all that surprised.  
  
"It's not a squid, it's a Halavrin, and they don't belong in this dimension. Poor thing's scared to death. We're as repulsive as all hell to it."  
  
"Us?" Chameleon asked. "Hasn't it looked in a mirror? And why ain't it repulsed by you?"  
  
"He's a god," Scott said, almost disapprovingly.  
  
"It's not seeing me that way," Bob pointed out, giving it a final pat on the head. Its affectionate tentacle slid off him harmlessly, and Logan wasn't sure if it froze again, or was simply docile now that Bob had shown up. Did he look like some Halavrin god to it?  
  
Bob walked over to Xia and Tom, who were still kneeling on the floor, Tom with a bloody hand clasped over his arm. He stared at him warily, out of eyes bright with pain, but he wasn't stupid enough to make any hostile moves. Even Xia seemed at a loss, but that could have simply been Bob's doing. "You're okay," Bob said, crouching down before them. "And sweetheart, your power is no good against me, so don't bother."  
  
Tom let out a sigh of relief, and blood was no longer pooling on the floor beneath him. Logan wondered if a main artery had been severed. Xia was looking at him with a combination of fear, suspicion, and awe, and she still seemed to be silently crying. Her eyes widened slightly as Bob stared into her eyes, and he knew he had her. "Don't hear this," Bob said, making a motion towards Scott and Chameleon. "No one but you, Logan. Now, you think you're ready to talk about it?" Bob asked her. Like she honestly had a choice.  
  
"If she doesn't want to, don't make her," Logan said, surprising himself. Part of him didn't want to know what she'd say.  
  
"Sweetheart, it's not your fault," Bob told her. "You know Control was full of shit. He was gonna tell you anything to get you back where he wanted you. But that's an interesting thing about Shrike … "  
  
"Are you gonna let me in on this?" Logan asked.  
  
Bob gave him a smart ass grin. "I thought you didn't want to know."  
  
He glared at him. He hated him when he was like this. "Do you want me to kill you?"  
  
That just made Bob's grin wider. "Think you can? My aren't we feeling grand, 'specially for a guy with one ear. By the way, the Van Gogh look is so you."  
  
"Fuck you, it's growing back." It was, he could feel it; it hurt like hell. "Now are ya going to tell me what's going on here?"  
  
Bob raised an eyebrow at Xia. "Do you want to?"  
  
She closed her eyes and shook her head, holding Tom tighter. He couldn't hear any of this, and looked deeply puzzled.  
  
Bob looked at him, and said, "She's a pretty screwed up kid, Logan. The Organization had a lot of fun with her too. She thinks maybe she loved Wolverine."  
  
"Me?"  
  
"No, Wolverine."  
  
He was about to ask him what the fuck that was supposed to mean but then he got it. Wolverine - the alter ego. The one he could feel slipping back into the driver's seat. "I mean, she loves ya too, don't get me wrong, but she can't quite differentiate between you two, although she sees the division perfectly clearly."  
  
"That makes no sense."  
  
"As I said, she's pretty screwed up."  
  
Logan scratched the back of his neck, and ended up with lots of drying blood under his fingernails. "So she and I were, uh, involved?"  
  
"No, her and Wolverine."  
  
This was so confusing, he decided it didn't really matter.  
  
"I'm sorry," Xia said finally, trying to hold back the tears. "I never meant to hurt anyone."  
  
"You didn't, hon, not really," Bob reassured her. "Just yourself. And oh sure, you abused Logan's trust a bit, but at this rate, who hasn't?"  
  
"What?"  
  
But they weren't paying any attention to him. Xia stared at Bob, tears still falling down her face, and said, "I'm sorry."  
  
"I'm not the one to tell. Get this out, and drop the guilt, okay?" He stood up, and offered Xi a hand up. She took it, and allowed him to help her to her feet. She then walked over to him, no longer crying, but her face was still glistening with shed tears, and her lower lip quivered slightly. "I never meant to hurt you, Logan," she said, fighting to keep her voice level. "You were the most important thing to me … I didn't mean to fuck everything up … I'm sorry - "  
  
He had no idea what she was talking about, but in a way, he didn't want to know. "You didn't hurt me," he told her, pulling her into his arms. She hugged him tightly, burying her face in his bloody chest. "Nobody hurts me for long." If only that was true beyond the physical sense.   
  
He rested his chin on the top of her head, and wondered why he felt both angry at her and sorry for her. He was just as fucked up as she was, if not more so, so he knew he couldn't judge her, no matter what she did or why. And now he had decided he really didn't want to know.  
  
He looked at Bob over her head, and said, "How much of this can you fix?"  
  
"What, you mean of the Frankensteinian genetic experiments? Not much. Halavrins and humanoids are genetically incompatible - I imagine they'll die soon enough, but at least they can go home to do it. You know, they're really peaceful beings; they just don't belong here."  
  
"How did they get here?"  
  
Bob shrugged. "No idea, and their minds are too scrambled to tell me."  
  
He knew how they felt. "Xia is dying. So is Chameleon."  
  
"Not anymore they aren't."  
  
He should have figured Bob had covered that base already. "What did Cyclops do, exactly?"  
  
Bob gave him that Cheshire Cat grin again. "Oh, I ain't tellin' ya. He can do that. And believe me, I wanna see that."  
  
It took much more courage than he thought it would to ask, "What did Shrike do to me?"  
  
"She was told he had some unauthorized fun in your mind, but not the what and wherefores of it. It could be another lie."  
  
"Or it could explain a lot."  
  
"Or that, yes."  
  
"Should I worry about it?"  
  
Bob made a show of thinking about it, and just his reluctance to say anything told Logan it was bad news. Finally, he said, " No, no point."  
  
Because there was nothing he could do about it? "You can't go in my mind and find all the Shrike bits and remove them? Assuming they're still there?"  
  
Bob grimaced, and he knew he was about to be let down easily. "It's not that simple."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Cause he was insane long before the Organization deigned to notice. And the insane can be tricky to track, especially if they're a telepath."  
  
He was sure there was something Bob wasn't telling him, but again, he found himself not really wanting to know. He wanted a beer, he wanted to get out of here, and he wanted to forget this ever happened. "You pushed me back at the convenience store, didn't you?"  
  
"Did I?"  
  
Logan frowned at him. "Does anyone ever buy your innocent act?"  
  
"Not as a rule, no."  
  
"So what did you push me about?"  
  
Bob looked at him with a mischievous glitter in his eye, and a very suspicious smile on his face. "You'll know when you're ready to know."  
  
Oh, he really didn't like the sound of that. 


	10. Part 10

15  
  
At least when you had Bob clean stuff up, it really did disappear without a trace.  
  
He zapped stuff away, and that included the Halavrins, who were very happy to reform (literally in several cases) and go home. Bob confirmed that the living Wolverdemons were so mindfucked and "damage" they had nothing approaching higher brain functioning; they were the humanoid equivalent of attack dogs, no more, no less (just what the Organization wanted to make him). Logan asked him to just get rid of them. Bob seemed to teleport them away, but he probably did something more - Logan didn't want to know, and didn't care, as long as they were gone.  
  
While the others left with Bob to find out what became of Spider and his prey, Logan lingered back, mainly because the tendons were still finishing connecting in his leg. Most of the holes had healed over, and he had stopped bleeding, but his ear was still coming in. And cartilage growing back was only second in pain to teeth growing back in.  
  
He knew he wasn't alone, though. Scott still loitered in the hall, as if waiting for someone to tell him to go home. Of course, Logan knew it wasn't that. "So you came to kick my ass, huh? Want a shot now?"  
  
Scott looked back at him, scowling beneath his visor. "Just like that, huh?"  
  
He retracted his claws, which he had left out mainly as a habit. This place stank of blood, and that always put him on edge. "No powers."  
  
Scott snorted derisively, shaking his head. "You can't turn your powers off, Logan. Sure, you can keep from using the claws, but you have a metal skeleton, and your healing factor is autonomic - you can't turn those off."  
  
Autonomic; Jean probably told him that once. He could almost imagine her telling him over lunch somewhere, "No, Logan has an autonomic healing factor…" "Fine, you don't use your power. Or do, I really don't care. You get five free shots at me; I won't fight back. Five shots, your choice."  
  
Scott stared at him for a long time, probably sizing him up, and figuring out what the catch was. "Okay, five shots - then what?"  
  
"Then I get one."  
  
Scott crossed his arms over his chest and looked huffy, and Logan knew he'd been sussed - he wasn't as dumb as he looked. "One shot? You know, I've taken more than one shot from you before. Do you think I'm a complete dumb ass? You're some street fighting thug with a metal skeleton; you could fracture my skull with a single shot."  
  
He shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for tryin'." He wasn't planning on fracturing his skull exactly, just putting him down for a while. A good, long while. It wasn't like Bob wasn't around to undo the damage.  
  
Scott shook his head in disgust and turned away. "You're incredible. You know, if you left Xavier any clue that this was just some little ploy of yours, we never would have believed you were a traitor. Would it have killed you to leave a note on the fridge or - "  
  
"A traitor?" He interrupted, and his voice was full of enough anger that Scott actually paused and looked back at him. "Listen, bub, I'm a lot of things, but I'm no traitor. Now get this through your thick fucking skull - I ain't one of you. And don't get all huffy and try and pretend that you ever wanted me there, 'cause you made it quite clear you didn't want me around. And now that you get your wish, you think I'm a traitor? Fuck you, Boy Scout."  
  
"Hey! I - " He stopped, scowled at his own thoughts, and took a moment to formulate whatever lame ass argument he could muster. "No, Logan, I never wanted you around. You're undisciplined and selfish, and no better than a common bar brawler, just with a more lethal left hook."  
  
"Undisciplined?" He repeated in angry disbelief. "Selfish? That's real rich comin' from you. Do you know know how many times I held back 'cause I knew you pantywaists couldn't take it? Do you have any idea?"  
  
"And we should be grateful for that?" He replied, throwing his arms out wide in exasperation. "Gee, thanks Logan for not killing those guys."  
  
"It might have saved us a world'a pain if I did," he snapped, and it was out of his mouth before he realized the potential implications.  
  
They just stared at each other for a moment, and in that instant, Logan had an inkling of what it might be to be Human level (not Bob level) telepathic - they were both thinking of Jeannie, weren't they? And that's what this was really all about, wasn't it? Some lingering macho bullshit over Jean, who would have been equally disgusted by the both of them, and for damn good reason.  
  
It was Scott who gave it up first. He shook his head again, shoulders slumping as he turned away for good. "This is pointless."  
  
Logan agreed, but not out loud, as he wasn't quite prepared to go that far. But it was pointless continuing a rivalry over a woman who was not only dead, but died because they both failed her. There was more than enough blame to go around.  
  
He followed him down the wreckage and gut strewn corridor (Halavrians blew up real good, it seemed), and after getting a bead on his miserable restlessness, said, "Don't even think about turning around and sniping me, Scott. Do you really wanna see how fast I can move when I'm motivated?"  
  
He let out an exasperated sigh and dug his hands into the pockets of his pants, not willing to acknowledge he'd been thinking about it. But Logan knew he had. "You think you're so cool." he said derisively.  
  
"I don't think it," Logan countered. "I know it. Unlike you, Captain Buzzkill." the kids at school had several appropriate names for Scott, but that was undoubtedly the best one.  
  
Scott didn't look back, he simply held his hand up and gave him the finger over the shoulder. Logan chuckled, amazed that he even knew what the gesture meant.  
  
They were halfway out of the building when Logan smelled someone familiar, in spite of the rank scent of blood clogging his nostrils (he didn't need a shower more than he needed a serious hosing down). "Where the fuck ya been, Jayson?" He asked, not bothering to look behind him.  
  
Scott looked around, clearly puzzled. "Who are you talking to?"  
  
"Invisible guy followin' us. Meet him yet?"  
  
Scott looked over his shoulder, but of course Specter was still ghosted, so he didn't see him. Still, he seemed to take his word that he was indeed there. "I heard someone out in the parking lot when I arrived, but I didn't see anyone. Him?"  
  
"Probably. So where have you been, Jayson?" He didn't know why he was needling the guy - he didn't like to fight, and he was the first to admit, unseen or not, he wasn't very good at it. The fact that Logan knew someone else who could seem invisible - Nightshade - and still take care of herself just fine, even though she wasn't a fighter either, detracted from any sympathy he had for him.   
  
After a long moment of silence, he finally said, "I was looking for weapons." Scott actually jumped, either not expecting him to speak, or actually assuming Logan was playing a lame joke on him.  
  
"In here?" Logan asked dubiously.  
  
"Well, I wasn't rushing in without something; it sounded like World War Three in there. And you kinda look like it."  
  
He decided to ignore that little crack; he knew he looked like shit. He didn't feel so great either. "The guards had weapons."  
  
"Guards?" Jayson had a whiff of panic about him.  
  
"The ones in the parking lot that Spider took out. He didn't get all their guns."  
  
"Oh," he said, in a small, quiet voice. That little detail had broken apart his perfectly good lie.  
  
Jayson lapsed into silence, save for his footsteps crunching on debris behind them, and Scott asked, "What was going on back there? Some of those demons looked like you."  
  
Logan just knew he was thinking "…so are you one…" or the perennial favorite "You'll screw anything, won't you", but he didn't have the balls to say it. "It was some kinda gene splicing experiment or somethin'. The Organization must have been worried that muties would fail them as mutie killers, so they made half demon ones with favorable attributes from their current crop of mutant killers. I guess maybe they thought that they could perfect the killing instincts, but it was as much a failure as project Arsenal - how do you control homicidal demons, part human or not? It seems their brainwashing was as successful as it was on me, yet less so. At least the psychic butchering was the same."  
  
"They really liked your claws, didn't they?"  
  
"I think it was my healing factor they wanted. I can take a lot of damage and still keep goin'."  
  
"I've noticed." Scott was silent for several beats, then said, very quietly, "Bastards. I'm glad they're finished. I hope they choked on it."  
  
Logan was shocked to realize that Scott wasn't talking about the demon hybrid back there, but the Organization itself. He had no idea he held that much venom towards anyone, nevertheless them. Was it because of Jean? Maybe - but maybe it was more than that. Didn't he try some lame ass "bonding" thing with him once, over their mutual brainwashed status? As if being brainwashed for a day or two somehow equated with the mental cluster-fuck he'd been subjected to for years, not to mention the constant physical mutilation. But it had hit Scott hard, hadn't it?  
  
Scott had thought he was safe; he had thought he was tough (how Logan had no idea) and prepared for anything. The Organization had destroyed his sense of complacency, of security; it had shaken him to his core. Scott had learned he was as vulnerable to attack as anyone else, that even a guy whose eyes shot out destructive beams of light and possessed an unwavering sense of moral superiority could be as much a victim as anybody.  
  
Logan didn't like to think of himself as a victim, but of course he was - they all were. Whoever the Org got their claws into was a victim, even Shrike and Reaper. They just took out their frustrations on other mutants; maybe it made them feel better, gave them a reason to get up in the morning.   
  
For the second time in his life (the first time was after Jean's death - without Jean, what did Scott have?), Logan felt sorry for the Boy Scout, and he instantly loathed it. He didn't want to feel sorry for him; he didn't want to feel anything for him beyond a high grade irritation.  
  
"They're not finished," Logan pointed out. "They've gone deeper underground, and maybe they're not using mutants as obviously as they once did, but they're still around. They're just gonna have to be more sneaky about it."  
  
"Luckily, we're sneaky too," Jayson interjected.  
  
True enough.  
  
As soon as they got outside, Logan took a deep breath of the clean night air, trying to cleanse his nostrils of so much blood (mostly his own, but not completely), but it didn't work as much as he'd hope.   
  
All the others were now grouped around something about ten meters from the broken gate, and about five meters from that was a dead demon. Logan heard Bob saying, " - okay, all right?"  
  
Logan smelled the blood even before they breached the circle, and he knew then that Spider had been critically injured. He was laying splayed face up on the fissured pavement , his arm over the large, three pronged gashes that had ripped him open from side to side. He was cut completely in half, but it was a close thing; he was definitely in danger of having all his organs fall out, so it was a good thing he chose not to move, just bleed out silently on the asphalt. The blood pooling beneath him and dripping into the cracks was reddish-black, and Logan wondered why it wasn't blue - didn't spiders generally have blue blood? He thought he heard Jayson gag at the sight.  
  
Spider looked up at him with glazed eyes, blood still trickling out of his nose and mouth. "You're pretty fast with those claws of yers, ain't ya Badger Boy?"  
  
Logan flinched, but he had already figured out that one of his hybrids had nailed Spider. "Get both of them?" He only saw the body of the tentacled demon who escaped, but you never knew.  
  
"Nah. My eviscerator got away."  
  
"We should go after it," Chameleon said. She was back in her small Latina form, but this time she didn't look like she wasn't melting.  
  
"No need, she'll be apples," Bob said. He was crouched beside Spider, a hand flat on his chest. Bob's eyes seemed to fill with blue light before he closed them, and he raised his free hand out towards the desert, slowly closing it into a fist. Then he said quietly, "No worries, I got him."  
  
"What do you mean you got him?" Tom repeated, obviously not sure he could trust him. He'd probably forgotten that Bob had healed him. "Do you powers extend over that range?"  
  
"He's a god," Scott said again, sounding exasperated with these clowns. "His range is the entire planet."  
  
"No, it's not," Bob corrected him, opening his eyes and looking up at him. It looked like Spider's gut wound was starting to close up slowly. "But all I have to know is my target to get it - distance rarely matters."  
  
"So this is why you freaked Spike out," Chameleon said.   
  
Bob smiled up at her benignly, and while Scott snorted humorously, Logan said absolutely nothing. Sometimes it was best to leave well enough alone.   
  
To his surprise, Scott tapped him on the shoulder, and when he glanced back, Scott jerked his head in the direction of the van. Logan followed him, mostly out of curiosity - he wasn't going to try and throw down within Bob range, was he? That couldn't be stupider.  
  
Once they were behind the van and blocked from the direct view of others, Scott looked around nervously, and asked, "Did the invisible guy follow us?"  
  
"Specter? No, he's by the North side of the gate, barfing his guts out."  
  
He grimaced, as if that was a bit more than he wanted to know, but hey, he asked. "Not much of a fighter, huh?"  
  
"How'd you guess? Why'd you drag me over here?"  
  
A muscle in Cyclops's jaw jumped slightly, and he looked like he'd just been made to swallow straight lemon juice. "You always have to go out of your way to make this difficult, don't you?" But he muttered that to himself before straightening up and attempting to look less sour. "Look, to be perfectly frank, Logan, I don't like you - I don't get you, I'll never get you, and I don't want to."  
  
Logan sighed, and impatiently shifted his weight to the leg that wasn't still burning. "Are you ever gonna tell me something I don't know?"  
  
He sighed through his nose, clenching and unclenching his hands as if this was painful for him to say. "I know … I don't agree with what you do or why. But I know you saved a lot of kids' lives that night that the Organization raided; I don't even want to think what would have happened if you weren't there. Not that I was exactly thrilled with what you did - did you really have to kill some of those soldiers?"  
  
"I killed some?" He replied blandly, aware he was a horrible liar when it came to this subject.  
  
He knew Scott was glaring at him from beneath that visor. "Are you through playing dumb?"  
  
Well, at least he didn't say "being dumb". "Are you ever gonna get to your point?"  
  
He made a noise of disgust and shook his head. "Why am I even trying ..? Logan … what I'm trying to say is, although I don't like you being around … we could use you our team, and there will always be a place for you at Xavier's. Jean - " he paused and seemed to need a moment to gather himself. Logan waited, mainly because he was curious to hear what came after that. "She had a gift for reading people, even beyond the telepathy. And although I thought she gave people more of a benefit of a doubt than they deserved … she told me she saw something good in you. I didn't want to believe it, and I still can't accept that … but I can't believe she'd be wrong either. I don't know everything the Organization did to you, I can't imagine half of it. But I know that the fact that you still have anything even approaching sanity left means you must be the toughest son of a bitch on the face of the earth, and I'd be lying if I said we couldn't use your help from time to time."  
  
"Time to time? Ya mean all the time."  
  
"Don't push your luck."  
  
"You're not gonna try and hug me now, are ya?"  
  
"Oh god no."  
  
"It's 'cause I smell like a slaughterhouse, isn't it?" He replied, deciding to use humor to defuse the weirdness of this. Scott had supposedly come here to kick his ass, and now he was waving a white flag? Had Bob done something to him?  
  
"That's number seven on the list of reasons."  
  
"How big's the list?"  
  
"A million and three."  
  
"Three?"  
  
"You being you takes up a half million reasons," Scott said, turning away. He started to walk around the van, but stopped abruptly, like there was someone there. Logan knew there wasn't, he didn't smell anyone. Coming up behind Scott to look over his shoulder, he saw that there was a gap in the circle, and Bob was looking towards this way, still crouched beside Spider but grinning up at them like an idiot. "Were you eavesdropping?" Scott asked sourly.  
  
"Well, how could I not?" Bob answered honestly. "I feel positively squishy inside. A bonding moment! And me without a camera."  
  
"Do you think, if we team up, we can take him?" Scott muttered.  
  
Logan shook his head. "No chance. And I don't wanna know what he'd do to us for even tryin' it."  
  
Bob's grin grew even wider, which seemed impossible. "Oh, you boys are no fun anymore."  
  
Logan still wondered if Bob had manufactured Scott's mood swing. He supposed he'd always wonder. At least Bob kept the others from hearing it too.  
  
Spider did finally get healed up, and as soon as he struggled to his feet, Bob said, "You remember, but you can deal with it."  
  
Spider slapped his hands to his head, as if trying to hold his brains in, and exclaimed, "Bloody hell - what the fuck have I been doing?"  
  
"Welcome to the club," Logan said, although with very little sympathy. Spider's mind had only been fucked to the point where his memories were inaccessible to him; they had not been completely taken away. He hated to feel jealous, but he couldn't help it.  
  
"And, you know, I think we should all rethink homicide as a lifestyle choice," Bob said to the rest of the circle, apropos of nothing. It was probably a push, just an odd one.  
  
"You have the weirdest friends," Scott groused.  
  
"They're not my friends," Logan protested, but he doubted the Boy Scout bought it or cared.  
  
The funny thing was, it was beautiful out here. Without city lights to impede the view, the sky was a blanket of bright stars just starting to emerge in the dark, which was not perfect black but getting that way. It was almost pleasant. Shame about the earthquake damage and dead bodies all around here.  
  
Finally they'd come to a moment where they'd have to figure out what the fuck they were going to do now, which turned out to be a stunning poser. After a few awkward minutes, Chameleon said to Scott, "So that school of yours, you take in adults, right?"  
  
Scott looked appalled. He seemed to struggle to remember how to speak when Logan told her, "You gotta follow their rules. It's a pain."  
  
She shrugged nonchalantly. "Don't care. I just need a place to crash while I get my shit together and raise some capital. I thought I was dyin' , you know? I kinda blew my wad."  
  
"What about your apartment?" Logan asked.  
  
"Blew that up too."  
  
Scott made a slight wheezing sigh, like he'd just taken a rabbit punch to the kidneys. This must have been his worst nightmare - surrounded by people just like Logan. "Nothing illegal, no destruction. We have kids; it's a boarding school."  
  
"I know. I wasn't gonna blow it up!"  
  
"Ah shit," Spider said, still looking slightly bewildered by everything. "I used to have a flat in Tooting … bloody fuck, my girlfriend!" He looked searchingly at Bob. "Think I still have any of those?"  
  
"What's the last year you remember?" Bob replied.  
  
Spider had to think about it a moment. "Two thousand. Hey, that Y2K shit - that ever happen?"  
  
Even Scott grimaced at that. That flat and that girlfriend were probably long gone, along with any shred of Spider's life before this. That was how the Organization worked, after all.  
  
"Maybe you'd better come with me 'til you get your shit together," Chameleon told him. She had a point, and even Spider's strangely acquiescent nod proved he knew that.   
  
Scott's expression was so contorted it looked like his lips were trying to rip themselves off his face and go hide under the van. He was probably imagining flying back to Xavier's with Chameleon and Spider in tow. It wasn't a very inspiring picture, especially since Spider was still wearing the clothes he's been partially eviscerated in.   
  
Logan decided to step in here, although he had no idea why. "Xavier probably would like to meet 'em," he suggested, hoping Scott got the implied message: Xavier could see what exactly they know.   
  
Scott must have gotten the hint, because after a moment, he nodded. "Yeah, okay. If you want to come back with me, fine, but you have to obey the rules."  
  
"We got it, Chico," Chameleon said derisively. "I'll just be coolin' my heels 'til I can jet, don't worry."  
  
It suddenly occurred to Logan that Scott had no idea that Spider - well, old, brainwashed Spider - had shot him and Storm. Did Spider even know anymore? Shit, that could be an awkward scene if someone figured it out. But it wasn't Spider's fault - he had simply been doing what he was programmed to do.  
  
Scott glanced at Tom and Xia, who were standing at the edge of the circle, and each had an arm around the other's shoulder, as if supporting each other in the face of a hurricane. She wasn't dying anymore - Logan wondered how that shifted the dynamic of their relationship, if it did at all. "What about you two?" Scott wondered. "Want to come along?"  
  
They both shook their heads, and Tom said, "I've got connections outside the Organization, and they owe me some favors. We can go away somewhere safe, hole up for a while."  
  
"I think we've had enough of mutant groups for now," Xia agreed. "No offense."  
  
"None taken." Scott said, then gestured to the jet, parked off by a dune beyond the gate. "Shall we go?"  
  
"You're forgetting the invisible guy," Logan reminded him.   
  
"Oh, right." He looked around briefly, but then gave up. "Er, uh, you want to come with?"  
  
"You're visible," Bob said, and then he quite suddenly was, leaning against the fence.  
  
Even Jayson seemed to be taken slightly aback by his sudden visibility, embarrassed to be seen by the naked eye. "Um, er … no. Thanks, but I think I'm just gonna find some place to hang out, get lost. When you can turn invisible, that's easy to do."  
  
"I bet," Scott agreed.  
  
Logan wondered if anyone - beyond himself, and probably Bob - appreciated the irony here: Jayson was the invisible man, even when he could be seen. His entire life was so devoted to disappearing, it was all he knew how to do, and all he cared to do. There was a life even more wasted than his.  
  
It was then Logan realized everyone was looking at him. "What?"  
  
"What are you going to do?" Chameleon asked. "Hitchin' a ride with us or what?" 


	11. Part 11

Logan didn't even have to think about it. He shook his head, and told them, "Nah. I've had enough of togetherness to last me for a life time."  
  
"Yes," Bob exclaimed triumphantly, and then explained, "I bet you'd be doing the crazed loner thing again."  
  
"I am not a crazed loner," he snapped, although he knew he probably was. He just wasn't ready to admit it.  
  
Scott was staring at him, jaw taut. "You're gonna leave me alone - " he had second thoughts about finishing that statement (What was he going to say? "With these clowns?" "With these freaks?" "With these psychopaths?"), and instead changed his tack. "Who's going to co-pilot the plane?"  
  
Now that was a lame recovery. He came in alone, didn't he?  
  
But Chameleon snorted, and said, "We worked for the Org. We can not only fly your goddamn jet, we could field strip it and put it back together again. "  
  
Scott gave him a look that pretty much said "That explains it." And Logan supposed it did - he could fly the plane, couldn't he? And he still wasn't sure how he knew. That had to be it - all the Org members were drilled on it, and they left those memories untouched in his brain, whether he was consciously aware of it or not.  
  
Scott led the sad tag team of mouthy Chameleon and confused Spider off towards the jet, and Bob said, "So where do you wanna go?"  
  
He shrugged, and found that he was really in no mood to tell Bob either. He really just wanted to be alone. "Can you zap my bike here? I think I just want to drive."  
  
"Zap?" Tom repeated curiously.  
  
"He can teleport."  
  
"Yes," Bob agreed. "I can zap you anywhere you want. I've gotten better at the aiming thing."  
  
Tom and Xia both raised their eyebrows at that statement. Logan knew Bob was teasing, but they could hardly appreciate it.  
  
Eventually, they came to believe that Bob wouldn't kill them or teleport them into the middle of the Atlantic ocean, and they said their final goodbyes. Tom stopped being such a catty asshole, but remained wary of him, and Xia gave him a goodbye hug that remained bittersweet, although at least this time she wasn't sobbing. Logan felt a twinge in his stomach, but that was all. He still didn't understand their relationship exactly, but he no longer had a wish to. It was whatever it was, and was probably just messy and ugly and not worth even half the pain it eventually caused. Which pretty much summed up all of his relationships, if he came to think about it.  
  
Jayson took the van - well, it wasn't so damaged that it didn't run, and somebody had to get it out of here - which left him alone with Bob and a whole bunch of corpses - which happened a lot, or at least more than it should have. "You gonna be okay?" Bob asked.  
  
Logan glanced behind him, and found that Bob had indeed zapped his bike in. Why would he doubt it? Bob was somewhere in between his concerned grandmother, his guardian angel, his agent, and his parole officer. "Yeah. Need a bath, I guess."  
  
"No, you need scrubbing down with steel wool. Maybe you should go through a car wash, just don't get the hot wax. Unless, of course, you wanna give the hairless experience a try."  
  
"I'll keep that in mind." He straddled the bike and put up the kickstand, aware that Bob was looking at him expectantly. "What?"  
  
"Nothing," he replied, in that way that did in fact mean something.  
  
"Bob."  
  
He sighed in exasperation, belying it with a smile, and clasped his hands behind his back. "I'm waiting for you to ask."  
  
"Ask what?" But Bob continued to stare at him, head canted to one side, pale smile on his lips, and Logan realized he was going to have to ask if he wanted him to stop looking at him that way. "Fine, smart ass - was it me?" Everything that seemed to have any genetic (or prolonged psychic) contact with him went totally bugfuck nuts - Chimera, those demon things, Shrike … himself. Yes, of course he had gone nuts; he knew he was probably clinically insane after he woke up in the woods. He had no idea how or when he got better - if indeed he did. He could still be nuts, but maybe it had subsided to a mellow insanity that just bubbled in the background, as opposed to being loud and out there.   
  
Bob shook his head. "Not at all. Chimera went nuts because they pushed his programming too far; those demon hybrids had incompatible physiology that would - under normal circumstances - have made it impossible to breed with Humans , therefore they were always gonna be damaged in some way; as for Shrike - mate, he sounded like a complete piece of work. What you gotta understand is that, in most Humans or any being, telepathy is not a gift. If you knew what everybody was thinkin' half the time, you'd be nuts too. Bullshit and lies are not only what keeps the world goin' round, but it also keeps people from killing one another. And, might I point out, you had prolonged psychic contact with them - well, more jean's case than Chuck's, I know - but they're not nuts, are they? And what about me? You haven't driven me nuts."  
  
"That's because you were crazy to begin with," he shot back.  
  
Bob just chuckled, like he was afraid he might. "Well, okay mate, got me there. But you know, Xavier, Jean, all those kids at the school, they're learnin' to handle it well. And you had my ability to see into minds for a smidge - would you like it back?"  
  
He was tempted to say yes (and in a way it would have been nice), but he knew there was no point lying to Bob. "No."  
  
"See? Proves your sane right there."  
  
"I have a split personality."  
  
"No you don't. What you have is an implanted personality, and it's really just a mutated version - excuse the pun - of some of your baser instincts, so you wouldn't reject it outright. It's close enough to the bone that it is you … to a point. And then it diverges, and it's not."  
  
That sounded like semantically hair splitting, but he wasn't going to get into that with Bob. He had a feeling he was a master of the loophole. "But you can't remove it?"  
  
"I think it's imperative that you do. Take your power back."  
  
Logan glared at him in exasperation. "How the fuck do I do that, Bob?! And what the fuck does that mean, anyways?"  
  
Bob's look was suspiciously sober. "You find a way to do almost everything, Logan. Don't underestimate yourself."  
  
He stomped on the accelerator pedal, and kick started the motorcycle to life. "So you're not gonna help me?"  
  
"I don't need to. You can do it."  
  
He clenched down hard on the throttle as he revved the engine in an expression of his impatience. "Yeah, sure. Way to be chicken shit, Bob."  
  
But Bob didn't take the bait - did he ever? He simply gave him a small smile and a mock salute. "Look after yourself, soldier. A lull in wartime only means the enemy stopped to take a piss."  
  
He almost tried to figure out what the fuck that was supposed to mean, but then stopped himself. Bob was probably just trying to be funny, in an extremely annoying way.  
  
Logan sped off into the cool desert night, happy to leave it all behind. Again. He did his best to ignore that niggling question in the back of his mind: 'For how long?' As long as he got away for a little while, maybe it didn't matter.  
  
16  
  
Logan woke up to find himself back in the snow. Well, at least he had clothes on this time.   
  
He stood up, brushing snow off his hands and the back of his jeans, and looked around. It was Alberta, certainly - near Alkali Lake? He didn't see any destroyed buildings or debris, and the topography looked slightly altered. The mountains were off to his left, high peaks so buried with snow they almost disappeared into the winter white sky, while a stand of scraggly, rime frosted scrub pines stood off to his far right, revealing a blanket of snow barely marred by the footprints of birds and animals. But the frigid air was rife with the scent of … him? Yes; he smelled himself all over this place.  
  
Suddenly he had an image in his mind's eye, of Bob back at that mini-mart, standing in front of the boxes of wine and bottles of Mad Dog 20/20, and he heard him saying, "Okay, remember this when you need to. I want you - when you're ready - to confront this however you want, and put it to rest. No matter what they did to you, it's still your body and your mind - take them back for good. And yes, this was the entire push, so you can stop worrying now." He then waved at him in an exaggerated, beauty queen sort of way, and Logan was back to staring at towering pine trees iced with snow.  
  
So that's what Bob meant, and why he was so chickenshit about removing the implanted personality; he thought he'd already had it set. Would it have killed him to tell him that?  
  
He heard growling before he saw him coming through the trees, round shoulder and stooped, as if carrying a heavy burden. It was himself, but not himself; it was a Wolverine with a bald silver pate and his claws out, wearing his adamantium skeleton on the outside of his body, like a suit of skintight armor. His eyes were ice blue and empty of everything but a rage that was as insane and aimless as it was painful - this thing hurt, and it lived to take it out on others, in hopes it would stop. "Are you what they wanted, or are you just what I think they wanted?" He asked it.  
  
Its eyes stared out from goggles of silver adamantium, and the flesh just peeked through here and there on it; it could have been a robot, or - more correctly - a cyborg. There was no recognition in it, no trace of anything Human, and yes, that would have to be, wouldn't it? No memory, no sense of self, no feelings, no conscience, no will to resist them. "You're me," Logan said, his breath making vapor trails in the air. "You don't even know it, but you are. We're the same thing."  
  
It snarled at him, lips curling beneath its skull helmet, and Logan was nearly overwhelmed by a sense of pity for this pale shadow of a thing, for himself. This was the best the Organization could do; after all that time and energy, after all those telepaths and torture sessions, this was the best thing they could come up with. It was pathetic.   
  
He'd popped his own claws, the familiar pain making him aware of what he had done, but at the same time he realized he didn't want to fight this thing. He was tired of fighting with himself. Yes, it was his preferred way of settling things, but he had no desire to do it today, not with this thing, not this way. Logan retracted his claws and let it see that. "Fighting would be like stabbing ourselves in the face - don't you get that? Let's just stop, okay? It's over."  
  
For a minute, he thought he'd gotten through to it. It stopped growling and straightened up slightly, as if confused. But then it let out a loud snarling shriek and lunged at him, claws first.   
  
It moved fast, but so did Logan, in spite of the calf deep snow. He dodged it easily and it crashed into the trunk of the pine tree behind him, slicing clean through it with its claws. Only then did Logan notice that they were unretractable - but of course, they were on the outside of his body. They were out, and they would always be out. Violence was its only language, its only ability, its raison d'etre; it was built to kill, so that was all it could understand.  
  
The tree fell away from them, but the heavy branches knocked snow from the limbs of neighboring trees, and they pelted down like chunks of glaciers. It turned to face him, snarling, claws out, and Logan shook his head and popped his claws again. It was always bizarre when he was the sensible one - it seemed like a violation of some natural law. "Fine, asshole," he sighed, taking a wary stance across from his metal doppelganger. "You wanna settle it this way? Okay by me." he was aware that, on some level, he must have wanted it this way - Bob had told him to settle this however he wanted. And violence was the neutral ground where he and his engineered personality met; it was a terrain they both knew like the back of their mutilated hands.  
  
But then he had the strangest feeling run down his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and the Wolverine thing seemed to freeze in its tracks. They were no longer alone.  
  
"It shouldn't be like this," Jean said.  
  
Logan turned so fast he almost gave himself whiplash. She was leaning against a tree, dressed in her black leather X-Men uniform, the jacket open to reveal the red t-shirt she wore underneath. She looked as she always looked, except her eyes were mirrors of flame. "You again," he said, but didn't retract his claws. He still had no idea who or what this was, and he knew better than to trust it. (Even though it smelled just like her …) "Get out. This is none of your concern."  
  
"It concerns you, so it concerns me," she said, but in such a way it gave him a chill. Well, no duh, it was fucking freezing here! But it was more than that, and he knew it.  
  
She approached him, and his claws retracted of their own accord. But he didn't even have much time to ponder that, as he noticed Jean was walking on the surface of the snow, and not breaking through; she was not even leaving footprints. What the fuck was she?  
  
"What do you want from me?" He asked, wanting to back away, but unable to. He no longer had any control over his own body. He too had been frozen in place, just like his abused twin, only he still had the ability to talk.  
  
"I want nothing from you," she claimed, and it felt like the flames that made up her eyes were piercing his skull. "I just want you to be well, Logan. As well as you can be." She grabbed his face in her hands, and he wanted to pull away, but of course he couldn't. (It felt like there was fire raging under her skin.) She then did something he didn't expect at all - she kissed him.  
  
Her lips were as warm as her hands, but he barely had time to notice. It wasn't just physical contact; he could feel her - her energy, her mind - filling him, a gush of lava pouring inside of him and filling up his hollow spaces.  
  
If he could move he would have reeled backwards from the enormity of it all, try and flinch away from the torrent, but he could not. And somewhere below it all, below the heat and the noise and the images zipping through his mind at the speed of light, he could feel her kiss, and it was pleasant. More than pleasant. It was Jean's kiss - he knew her touch, her taste, her smell; it was her, down to the last detail. Except …  
  
He lost himself almost instantaneously. Sensations were doubled - he could feel her kissing him, and he could feel himself kissing her - and the sensory input was far too much. On top of the energy filling his mind, it quickly became an overload, pleasure mutating into pain, and he didn't know which feelings were truly his. If he could have pulled away, he would have screamed.  
  
Logan felt his knees start to buckle, but she wouldn't let him fall. It felt like the energy was expanding his brain inside his skull, pressing it up against the bone, and it felt like he was undergoing an implosion in slow motion. What was she doing to him? What was -  
  
Logan woke up with a pained shout, sitting up and grabbing his head in his arms protectively. Shit shit shit!  
  
But there was no pain anymore. The energy settled, the heat faded away, and he slowed his own breathing, ceasing his gasping for air. He was okay; it was just a dream. A fucking weird ass dream, but …  
  
And that's when he realized what had changed, and some memories started trickling through his mind …  
  
… memories that did not belong to him.  
  
At first, Logan didn't want to make sense of it. He wanted to pretend it was false, or a lie - gods and demons could do anything, and so could other mutants.  
  
But he knew her. And he would swear he could still feel her inside of him.  
  
Holy fucking shit.  
  
Logan knew then that he had to talk to Bob.  
  
17  
  
He thought he was in control of his anger as he approached the Way Station, he really did. It was cold, and the unseasonable rain helped … at first. But it was as warm as blood, and had a slight tinge of pollution to it, obliterating the otherwise pleasant scent of water on hot asphalt. It felt slimy as it trailed down his face, crawled down his neck into his shirt, and he knew it might not have been the rain, simply him, and the way his rage colored his perception of the world. But he didn't really care.  
  
He opened the door of the glamour camouflaged bar, feeling the guise briefly tingle on his skin, and then he was swamped with music, smells, and noise. The day was gray, so he easily adjusted to the dark wood bar, the adopted disguise of the ridiculously pedestrian for the bizarrely fantastic, and he was glad to find the bar wasn't all that crowded. Maybe a dark day meant the vampires and other assorted beasties could go out and play.   
  
Lau was behind the bar, tranquilly polishing glasses, and he could hear Bob singing along with A Perfect Circle, sitting in the back by the jukebox, with his ubiquitous iBook on the table before him. Unlike with the unlucky Thrakazog, no one protested when Bob sang, because he could actually carry a tune. But what couldn't Bob do?  
  
"Delusional, I believed I could cure it all for you, dear - " he sang idly, tapping away at his keyboard like a mad pianist. Bob had yet to look up, but Logan knew he knew he was there.  
  
"Oi mate," the celery smelling Rags said, from his corner stool at the bar. "You look like a drowned cat."  
  
Logan stood glaring at Bob, wondering if he had a shot.  
  
" - coax or trick or drive or drag the demons from you, make it right for you sleeping beau - " Bob then stopped singing, stopped typing on his keyboard, and looked straight through him. There was no fear - was there ever? - just a sort of detached curiosity.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?" Logan snarled through gritted teeth. It sounded like the guitars were drowning him out, but he knew he didn't even have to speak for Bob to hear him.  
  
"Logan - " Bob said, in his calm, rational voice.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?!" He roared, picking up the nearest table and throwing it across the room. It shattered harmlessly against the side wall, throwing wooden shrapnel all over, proving it was a good thing no vamps were here.  
  
He heard the "whoomp" of Rags instantly teleporting himself away behind him, and the other demons without that ability started instantly scrambling for the doors. "Hey," the otherwise quiet Lau said, but Bob raised his hand towards him. "It's okay," he told the bartender.  
  
"It is not okay!" Logan shouted, shoving aside another table as he approached Bob. His anger was now a buzzing in his head, and he couldn't think of anything but smashing Bob through a wall and crushing every bone in his fucking body - if that were even remotely possible. "What did you do to her?!"  
  
"I did nothing to her."  
  
"Something did, goddamn it, and you know it! It was one of your fucking god friends, Bob! Do you really think I don't know the taste of that power?!" Jean - his thoughts were purely circular and obsessive, and were driving him back to the edge of madness. She was alive; she was still alive.  
  
But she wasn't exactly herself anymore.  
  
"You should have protected her! Why didn't you protect her!" He demanded, putting his fist through the next table. It broke apart so easily it could have been made of plywood.   
  
Bob had never looked away from his eyes, but to a modicum of credit, he hadn't pushed him yet (at least not that he was aware of). "I would have if I had been here," he insisted quietly, still clinging to his rational voice. But it had an undertone that was at once indignant and embarrassed. "I have been trying to come up with a way to help her, but she's been avoiding me - "  
  
"No fucking kidding, you motherfucker! You let it get her!"  
  
Bob calmly folded up his iBook and slid it onto his lap. He still hadn't bothered to stand up. "It's not that simple, Logan - "  
  
"You never told me! She was alive and you never told me! You let me think she was dead!" He picked up the table Bob had been sitting it and threw it aside. Logan heard it hit the bar, but there was no longer anyone there to worry about it. Bob was on his feet now, and his laptop was gone, probably zapped away.   
  
"I didn't want to get your hopes up until I knew it was at least fifty percent her," he said, his voice limned with steel.  
  
That made Logan pause. His head hurt with all this new information, like it was an actual physical thing trying to burrow its way out, and the only way he knew of to purge that pain was through violence. But now he wasn't sure he could ever hurt enough people to make his own hurting stop. "What? Fifty percent … I don't understand …"  
  
"Camaxtli or one of his friends may have cut a deal - seduced - Jean into some kind of agreement. But all gods are liars, and I don't think she knew what she was getting into; it's even possible she had no idea she was actually cutting a deal. If he came to her in a dream, she may have thought it was just that."  
  
He glared pure murder at him. "You knew - "  
  
"I did not. I found out about Camaxtli's duplicity long after the fact. Her avoidance of me makes me worried it might be Camaxtli wearing her skin."  
  
He wasn't sure if he could believe him or not. Jean's memories were full to bursting, and they felt like they were spilling out of his ears, dripping down with the rain. He felt lost inside himself, and his rage was a nice, solid anchor. "Power me up, Bob. I'll go kill him myself."  
  
"You can't - Eris already killed him. He was intending to make a power play in the higher realms, fill the power vacuum."  
  
Now he was well and truly lost. Was Bob trying to confuse him out of his hate? "If he's dead, he can't be Jean - "  
  
"Yes, he can," Bob interrupted. He spoke quickly, as if afraid he'd be interrupted in turn. "Let me tell you something about being an avatar. It's not only a vessel for your power while you're alive, it's an emergency escape hatch if the end looks near. You funnel your essence into your avatar, enough of it that you survive, and live through your avatar. I'd never subject you to such a thing, but most gods aren't as afraid of obliterating personalities of the so-called lessers as I am."  
  
"She was his avatar, and you didn't tell me?"  
  
"I didn't know. He didn't dare do it while I was around."  
  
Logan found himself breathing in gasps, like the rain had nearly drowned him, but it was this, all this information - all these things that he hadn't known - crushing them under his weight. He could feel something clenching inside his chest, a muscle, and he only briefly wondered if it was his heart. He didn't think anyone could become a god's avatar, not a human, but maybe, like his healing factor seemed to negate Bob's corrosive power, maybe Jean's telekinesis allowed her to have her own internal barricade. "It was me, wasn't it?"  
  
Bob looked confused. "What?"  
  
"It was because of me, 'cause I was your avatar. He was in some fucking pissing contest with you and he counted coup; he took someone right from under your nose." Logan wasn't aware he was crying until he heard the hitch in his own breath. "But it was because I was yours."  
  
Bob shook his head. "No, Logan, don't blame yourself - this isn't your fault. It's my fault, I underestimated him, put it all on me - "  
  
He was ill, suffocating on his own bile, and the room was liquid and red in his vision. He felt shattered, like everything in him was broken. "Not her," he said, and when he repeated it, it came out as an angry roar. "Not her!"  
  
Bob's look was so full of empathy and sorrow he had to turn away before he tried to decapitate him. He shot out his claw and started punching the wall. He lost count of how many times, but rain pooled on the floor beneath his boots, and he had punched an almost chest sized hole in both the inner and outer wall. He felt the sting of healing and knew he had cut his hand at some point, but who gave a fuck? He always healed; no matter what, he always healed.  
  
And Jean had died for them. Only, she had not completely died; she had been taken by a god, a bloodthirsty, angry god, and he had done god knew what to her. She was not dead, but maybe she wasn't completely alive either. And it was his fault. Another person he loved, gone because of him.  
  
Logan rested his forehead against the wall, and he felt like he was burning up; his rage was so great and incoherent it was like acid, and was now trying to eat its way through him. But he could do nothing to hurt Bob, and he knew from experience that he could do nothing to hurt the person ultimately responsible for this hideous atrocity - himself.  
  
"No, Logan no, don't do this to yourself," Bob said, placing a hand on his shoulder.   
  
Logan instantly spun around, elbowing Bob's hand off of him, and shouted angrily, "Don't you touch me, don't you ever fucking touch me!"  
  
Bob backed off, hands raised in supplication. "Okay, but I need you to - "  
  
"Fuck you! I don't want you fucking coming near me again, do you hear?! I am done with you! Stay the fuck away from me!" He wished he could kill him; he wished he could do something to take Jean's place.  
  
He wished he had never had the misfortune to meet Bob.  
  
Logan stormed out of the bar, and Bob made no move to stop him. Maybe he'd finally figured out what was good for him.  
  
Shadows hastily melted away from him in the rain, demons who had fled the bar and were waiting for the fireworks to die down - they didn't even want to risk being on the same side of the street as him. Good, it proved something around here was smart.  
  
He didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do, except get far away from here, from all of them: Bob, Xavier and his people. He was poison; he had always been poison.   
  
Logan wished there was some way he could lock himself away and throw away the key, but even that wouldn't be enough. The deepest, darkest hole wouldn't be enough.  
  
He knew he was going to discover - again - what it was like to keep on living when you no longer had the will to live.   
  
****  
  
The End (Or is it..?) 


End file.
